When kids go back in September, should schools stay open till 4pm

[Lardlizard]

To allow kids to catch up and allow workers to catch up on work

Putting another untrained adult in the classroom just because they happen to be unemployed won’t necessarily be assistance though.

For a teaching assistant to be assistance to the teacher they need to be able to work independently of the teacher, the teacher needs to be able to say “can you work with x y and z on this today” and leave them to it. The teacher needs to be able to trust they are able and confident otherwise it becomes more of an issue.

No why should the teachers work longer hours? They need time to prep lessons and Mark work, I’d rather a shorter day and better planned lessons that are interesting. Kids can’t concentrate when little for long periods.

My independent school already goes to 4:15 but the last 75 minutes are either clubs or games. If it was lessons, I think the kids would be too shattered to get much benefit from them. There’s only so long the mind can focus and retain.

@TiptoeStar

Controversial I know, but if there’s a need for children to catch up then a lot of teachers haven’t been doing their hours during closures so there shouldn’t be an issue with using them to catch up (plenty of MN polls with more than half of teachers saying their hours much reduced over lockdown... yes I know it’s not all etc etc). Where schools have provided good support and children are not in need of catch up work it shouldn’t be necessary.

The problem with this, is that I provided appropriate digital teaching and learning for my kids at home....but not all parents participated. So who is to blame there? There are many children in the class who have really benefited from a parent taking time and interest in their learning at home too.

I did this on top of working with key workers children, delivering food parcels to vulnerable families and physically making paper resources and hand delivering them to kids who were not appearing online.

More than half of my parents didn’t engage with the work, for various reasons. Some couldn’t cope, some had other things to juggle. I’m not blaming anyone, but teachers are constantly being told we are the ones who didn’t do enough. At the end of the day, parents should take some responsibility for the education of their children.

I have no problem working additional hours if I think it will benefit the children, but I think expecting primary children to do additional hours, which will eat into their play and extra curricular time is unfair and is unlikely to add any value.

@DCIRozHuntley

Erm, no. Kids are already at school for 30+ hours a week. Scrapping statutory testing and focussing on kids' mental health would be a far better use of everyone's time, not "catching up" with some arbitrary expectations or measurements of success.

^ Agree with @DCIRozHuntley completely

Teachers could have been sat on their bums doing no work for the entirety of lockdown and you still couldn’t make them work extra hours come September to make up for it. Directed time hours reset in the new academic year. Many teachers start new jobs in new schools - you couldn’t say ‘our previous bunch of teachers did bog-all so you have to work longer to make up for it’.

I like the idea that if teachers have been working hard, the kids won’t need catching up, given the number of threads from parents saying ‘I’m packing in home schooling’. An awful lot of kids haven’t been engaging despite the teachers working hard.

Also - to all of you who are saying that you can’t just put an adult in a classroom and expect them to teach, wtf do you think just happened to parents who have spent the last three months homeschooling??!

TipToeStar ....... with their OWN children!

So quite frankly - half the flipping parents in the country just became teaching assistants in the capacity I’m talking about. Or does that somehow not count because it doesn’t fit into the existing box??

Schools are not childcare

Thankfully in real life I’ve never come accords such wilful obstructive and negative behaviour from teachers than you and a few other usual suspects display on here. I suspect you are a minority

How can I be in a minority? I am stating a fact.

Do you not believe that whilst children are in your care that you are in loco parentis? Because you really are

That has nothing to do with the OP, which is what I was addressing. Of course the teacher is in loco parentis, but that's not providing childcare.

The two are quite different.

Well for one thing many parents aren’t homeschooling and for another they are only working with their child who they presumably know pretty well which is completely different to being plonked in a class of 30 children!

What, schools in general? So treating 5 year olds the same as 16 year olds? No.

Also - to all of you who are saying that you can’t just put an adult in a classroom and expect them to teach, wtf do you think just happened to parents who have spent the last three months homeschooling??!

Parents were/are not teachers, they provide the environment in which the work provided by teachers can happen during lockdown.

@twinkletoesimnot please genuinely explain the difference? The argument was that untrained adults couldn’t possibly teach anything and that asking them to do so undervalues education. True for some maybe, but there are a shitload who’ve just spent the last three months doing a brilliant job of exactly that, most of whom also have work commitments.

Like I say, if you can’t be flexible to new ideas and new resources you can’t complain about not having enough resources to meet the basic needs of the children and goals of education.

No. The situation is what it is. We cannot keep delaying and this is having an impact on everything else it’s not really fair. If your child is severely impaired by missing school then you would have to discuss with the school if necessary.

Teachers are paid for a set number of hours and the clock starts again in September.
My child has to spend at least an hour on school transport each way so I don't extra time added on to the day.
I don't want untrained adults put in front of groups of children.
I think mental health is going to be a bigger issue than 'catching up.'

Parents were/are not teachers, they provide the environment in which the work provided by teachers can happen during lockdown.

So the worksheets copied from an online site in five mins sent home by teachers magically inferred my child with the ability to read, write and count? You mean I didn’t just spend several hours a day teaching them, I just made sandwiches and brushed their teeth? Wow.

Do explain again how this is different to having another ASSISTANT? Not teacher, ASSISTANT?

TiptoeStar

Honestly, I do see where you are coming from and yes, while another set of hands can be useful to have in a classroom if they are not good at the job it creates more work for the teacher. I have had additional adults in the room before, e.g. people on work experience, TAs who simply cba or those who have had no initiative. Constantly having to give another adult direction of they have no initiative is draining, redoing jobs such as photocopying or creating resources if they haven't done it properly is frustrating not to mention a waste of resources and finally, having someone unskilled working and teaching children can be dangerous if they teach it incorrectly.

Honestly, I'd rather be on my own that have someone who fits in this criteria, which is more likely if you have someone who us completely untrained. I am not saying everyone who would apply for this will fall into these groups, however, working with kids is a skill in itself let alone trying to help educate them.

It is pretty obvious that tiptoe has no idea what the role of a teaching assistant actually entails.

So what's the point of all the homeschooling I've been doing?

So @Saoirse7 what do you actually want, honestly!? Kids are behind, how is that going to be remedied?? Complaining doesn’t solve problems and I just despair at the amount of pushback I see at ANY ideas, all of which is at the expense of our kids.

No. Not just for the sake of the teachers who have marking and prep work to do after school.

Many after school children's activities are small businesses, we are already taking a huge hit as leisure, gyms and dance studios etc are still not allowed to reopen. Not only the financial damage to those clubs, but the well being of the children too who enjoy and thrive on their hobbies and after school pursuits. Longer school days will mean many children will just be too tired to go to an activity after, and it is not possible to fit every single age group in on a saturday/sunday.

I can’t believe you’re suggesting that temporary ASSISTANCE for teachers is anything but a good thing FFS.

Unfortunately, untrained volunteers (in many settings, not just schools) often create more work that they help relieve.

If there are to be more TAs, the government needs to fund schools to train and employ them properly. In many schools, TAs have been done away with entirely because budgets have been repeatedly slashed. Blame the government, not the schools and not the teachers.

The point is not that you can't just put an adult in a classroom and expect them to teach even though you can't.

It is that you can't just put a child in a classroom and expect it to learn. Just like you can't just put a kid at the kitchen table with a worksheet in a pandemic and expect it to learn. A child's brain is not just something you can fill up and the longer you spend pouring the now it will fit inside.

I think there is a massive difference between supervising your own child to complete work specifically designed for home supervision and most likely being consoldation work - and teaching new concepts to a group of children. I also think if parents had been effectitive there would be no need for a scheme as apparently its so easy theyve all done it so there is nothing to catch up.
I would love schools to have budgets to increase TAs back to the level before the cuts. But they need to stay beyond a year to get the benefit.