Primary Schools plans’ for future homeschooling

[Lemons1571]

The government guidance says something along the lines of “schools need to be ready to immediately switch to remote learning to minimise disruption”. Presumably this is if a bubble bursts or there is a bigger local lockdown in the area.

So, how are the primary schools going to manage home learning when parents are also working and unavailable to input / manage / set up this “provision”.

I would like a plan B for my family, but I can’t think of one. If there is a local lockdown we can’t have anyone else in the house (eg vulnerable grandparent) to help. I work 9-6 no flex, DH works out of the home 9-5. Mortgage needs paying. I can’t try and enthuse a primary aged child to do some homeschool at 7am or 7pm, it just wouldn’t happen and wouldn’t be fair. But then not paying the mortgage if I don’t work isn’t exactly a great plan either.

Does anyone know if primary schools have a plan that doesn’t assume all families have a sahp able to support this? Does anyone else have a plan B?

The problem is with the £1 billion funding for extra tutoring is that for a large part of that (£650 million) a school has to pay 25% of the cost from their own budget before being able to bid for some of the additional funding. Schools don’t have spare budget to do that so won’t be able to access this funding.

I think the remaining £350 million will be allocated to Pupil Premium.

@NailsNeedDoing

"On your point about schools providing catch up for children whose parents didn’t engage in the home learning for whatever reason, you’re being unreasonable. Where do you think the extra time and staff are supposed to come from to facilitate this? How are the children supposed to have the time to cover the new work if they’re out of the classroom doing the previous work?"

But what about those schools that didn't provide any home learning or contact?

DD goes to a school of 700 primary aged kids who got nothing. They have all definitely missed out on 6 months of learning content. Like most of the parents we did try and we dug around for stuff on Twinkl and various interactive websites: offschool, oak national academy, bbc etc but there was no consistency and every kid will have covered different topics, levels and amounts.

@dibbleme

Actually I think one of the hardest scenarios is going to be the halfway house - when school is open but significant numbers of children are absent because of self isolation (due to symptoms of a family member for example). At least when a whole school is closed, the teachers aren't in class - so they have time available to deliver remote learning (in whatever format that's delivered). But when the school is open and the teachers are in class teaching all day, who on earth is going to be sorting out high quality remote learning for the (say) five kids out of thirty who are at home that fortnight?

This.

I am a secondary teacher and as such we are not part of ‘bubbles’ to allow us to teach all year groups. If our bubble pops then the bubble will isolate but not us (as we all supposed to stay 2m apart and thus not counted as a close contact).

I can not teach the live lessons I was during lockdown as I’ll be in school teaching my other classes. We will most likely send PP/work sheets home but it won’t be the same quality as it was during lockdown.

Scrap what I said about the tutoring funding, the Government have finally published their guidance this morning and schools will be given their share of the £650m in 3 parts, bearing in mind this equates to about £80 per pupil in total.

I am a private tutor. In order to meet costs and actually earn a living I charge £40 per hour for 1-1 tutoring. £80 per student is not going to go very far! I think they will employ recent graduates who will be cheaper but have learned fewer teaching skills and may not be very familiar with the actual curriculum, style of exam questions etc.

With lower primary you can get most done in a couple of weekend days.
Kids who can read to themselves have that advantage.
Maybe buy something like
Matnseeds or mathletics if not provided by school.
Cgp books as they have the answers.

If i wasnt getting work from school or busy with my job i would
Set 1hr reading daily. Fiction
Bitesize daily
Oak
TT rockstars.
Mathletics work

What you would need to do at weekends practise writing and topics etc.

I really wouldnt rely on gov to ensure child doesnt fall behind.

Secondary and higher up primary more difficult but again any online maths/english. Reading to themself.

For those saying that bits of worksheets off of Twinkl and Oak Academy are all a bit sporadic - that is a good point. I quickly realized that I wanted my kids to have more of a ‘curriculum’ - so I roughly assessed their levels in maths, english and science (primary aged) - and bought a couple of workbooks in each subject instead that are graded.

That way you know that they are going through a curriculum. I’d really recommend doing this as a Plan B. You can look up the curriculum on Oak Academy or even just the National Schools curriculum and base it all on that.

Also:
IXL and other online apps have each ‘year’ and build on the curriculum too.
Kumon Books - go up in a graded way
Singapore Maths books
Reading books - Oxford Owl
Oak Academy - to supplement

To be really honest - my kids have progressed and done more with 2-3 hours or work each week day than they did at school. They don’t need 6 hours plus working at a desk at Primary Level.

Also reading needn’t be done during the day if home schooling, it could be at bedtime. The advantage of being flexible.

I just did ‘schooling’ in the afternoons and we went out for a walk - and they watched TV while I did my own office work in the morning. They did workbooks for an hour or so in the afternoon - and then I sat down with them for 2 x2 hours slots to do games, reading, activities, art stuff etc.

One thing to bear in mind that a lot of resources were offered free when schools 'closed'. I am assuming some of them won't be free now to parents.

@ineedaholidaynow yes I’m hoping Oxford Owl don’t stop, but twinkl and others have. To be honest the worksheets aren’t as useful as just buying 3 or 4 workbooks that they can work through anyway. Look at Waterstones, probably about £8 each book but worth it.

A lot of the free stuff ended before twinkl is no longer free to parents nor is white rose maths (the videos are the worksheets not). I was debating a white rose parent subscription since the videos were good, engaging and followed a logical pattern but depends wether they continue to offer that in the next academic year (but I guess they will..where there is money to be made!)

I just wondered if primary schools now had to take into account that there might be two parents working ft (they didn’t before, and we were both working ft)

How do you anticipate that is going to work? What you seem to be asking is for schools to actually parent your children for you. You need a back up plan as much as the school does. The only people who can expect childcare are identified key workers but even that may be difficult depending on why the school has closed (several staff all ill at the same time will not be doing keyworker provision). If there was some kind of back up plan, you would hope the Government would consider single parent working households over dual parent working households. And remember, teachers are parents too - some of us may have no choice but to ask for unpaid leave to manage an absence situation in our own children’s schools.

They don’t need parenting, they need teaching .

The government had a key worker provision in place, whereby only one parent needed to be a key worker. The other parent could be a sahp but the child could still get a school place, while the sahp had 6 hours free to do what they liked. If that’s the way the government prioritise, I doubt they’re going to start putting single working parents first.

The Government have finally published guidance for a Plan B, late on a Friday night of a Bank Holiday weekend! At the moment mainly impacts Secondary Schools, operating on a rota basis, for schools in local lockdown areas.

@ineedaholidaynow I can’t find the official guidance on a rota system, on gov.uk. Can you point me in the direction?

I have however found Section 5 Contingency Planning for Local Outbreaks. Daily contact from teachers and a program the same as they’d have if they were in school? Are the gov mad? Maybe ok for some of the secondary years, but primary?

Where are the parents to facilitate this for primary school children - are these the same parents who have just today been told to stop wfh and get themselves back to their offices?

I think the government, being mostly middle aged men with women readily available to do all the childcare wrangling and organisation, simply don’t see an issue.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/how-schools-can-plan-for-tier-2-local-restrictions/how-schools-can-plan-for-tier-2-local-restrictions

Tier 2 @Lemons1571

I just feel more and more that I want no part in it. The government are fully incompetent. I want to want to send them, if that makes sense, we are a family that is really into school, but increasingly I just don't want anything to do with the chaos.

It just feels like chaos.

Just read most of it, thanks @ineedaholidaynow. I envisage 90% of parents cramming their job descriptions into the keyworker definitions, thus rendering the tier system pointless and disadvantaging the 10% poor kids left at home.

How many teachers do they think are available/ still in the profession, to do all this??

It’s just a big muddle through bodge until the vaccine can be rolled out in 2021 isn’t it?

My poor DS having to take GCSE’s next spring amid all this chaos.

How can parents trust the Government on how they are handling opening schools after this

@Lemons1571 I'm in the same position as you with DC doing GCSEs, and I'm also a school governor. I just feel like crying at the moment

@ineedaholidaynow

How can parents trust the Government on how they are handling opening schools after this

That's my problem. I simply don't trust them. All the trust I have in the school has been demolished by the fact the head is working to fulfill stupid, rushed and weak guidance.

It is just chaos and more chaos.

My kids really deserved a calm sensible plan and some semblance of competence.

I had just come to terms with sending my youngest two back to primary but it just feels so wrong. They don't have a handle on it at all. I'm a Sahm, I can afford to spare my sen 5yo this chaos.
I just want to feel confident in sending them, like I'm doing the right thing .

@Beebityboo

I had just come to terms with sending my youngest two back to primary but it just feels so wrong. They don't have a handle on it at all. I'm a Sahm, I can afford to spare my sen 5yo this chaos. I just want to feel confident in sending them, like I'm doing the right thing .

Same issues here with my sen 9 yr old and NT 6 year old (and to some degree their 3 yo sibling who is supposed to start nursery in Sept)

We have two full time parents and three kids (one nursery age). If there is another lockdown our 8 year old will get a full syllabus of online learning via Microsoft teams with loads of teacher input and no input from us (private primary). Our 6 year old will get absolutely nothing (state primary) if like last time the parents are expected to teach - we can’t look after a 3 year old and do our jobs and homeschool a child.

Department for education advice is that schools should be ready to provide proper online learning with teacher interaction in case schools need to shut or classes need to isolate but we’ve heard nothing from the state school in preparation for that.