School not required to provide work for isolating pupils?

[justchecking1]

Apologies if someone has already posted this. We've received a letter from the director of education stating that school is not required to provide any work for isolating pupils (Swansea). Is this a national thing? Where does it leave the pupils?

Where does it leave teachers if they do? Delivering a lesson in person in actually much quicker than doing something remote. This is what oak academy is for. However, I would try to set work for my gcse kids.

I am also in Swansea and I have not received that letter yet. Both of my children’s schools have requested that they enrol in Google Classroom though to give them access to their homework tasks and other resources so I would have work for them should (?when) we need to isolate. Maybe the council or Welsh Government don’t want to put the expectation on schools that they have to due to the pressures they are already under but most schools will surely provide some level of work?

My kids have been off for a week and no school set. We tried Oak Academy but it was at a completely inappropriate level so in the end I gave up. Hopefully they will be back tomorrow although looking more like Tuesday.

I was under the impression from the DfE that schools had to provide work. But this is England. Not sure about Wales.

I wouldn't expect work set per say but we haven't even been told what topic the youngest is going and the oldest is doing Titanic again which he has studied before and he did again a bit for home learning in May as the youngest was studying it. A curriculum map to give an idea of topics they would be covering in school would be fine.

If a whole class is off I have time to set work. If the majority of the class is in then I'm teaching them and don't have time to set work. It's not that I don't want to set work for isolating kids, it really isn't

It's really not realistic to expect schools to set work for individually isolating children.

At the secondary school where I work, kids will be able to access online accounts which will give them an idea of what is happening at school so they can keep up to some degree. I imagine staff will check in at least once during quarantine and all teachers of individual students are being bothered if they are isolating so they can judge if theres anything significant enough to contact them for directly.

Our secondary school have said they will put PowerPoints and assignments on teams for isolating kids with an expectation they would complete..was part of the home school contract and I thought should have at least made a reference to if the child was well or ill!

I don’t know if it’s legal or just our school though. I strongly suspect the primary school will do nothing unless a child is present in class given they did bugger all last time!

Wales is required to set work too as far as I was aware from reading the guidelines.

Our state school has already told us that they have the IT for live lessons working so pupils isolating at home will be expected to attend their normal classes online. So doing their normal timetable

They have sent round a. Google form asking people to say if they really cannot do this. If they don't have access to a dedicated laptop or PC for the student They will be either providing one or have said they may allocate some space with pcs where a small number of children can attend classes remotely where they will be very spaced out. Obviously only for those isolating that are non symptomatic So not ideal but a good compromise I think

A little different but how would this work with children who are vulnerable if / when shielding resumes? Would they not be entitled to anything?

Absolutely genuine question- I promise - I know teachers and schools are right up against it. Why isn’t it possible to stream a live class while teaching it in person? I’m thinking Older secondary?

Most state schools are not happy about live streaming for safety reasons.

Pity UK schools don't really use textbooks and workbooks, as this would make it far easier for them to keep up for a while at home.

In many schools the IT is shockingly bad. It is so stressful right now for teachers trying to get their laptops plugged in and linked to projectors in a different room every hour, while also ensuring all pupils sanitise themselves and their desks at the start and end of lessons. Not to mention trying to maintain discipline whilst maintaining a 2m distance from all pupils ( this is impossible by the way) . Live streaming is light years away from where we are right now.

@greenteafiend thank you. Sorry to ask another question. What are the safety reasons? You can do it without seeing each other’s homes. (If that’s the issue) Eg on crowdcast. It does mean the teacher can’t see the student. But it’s better than no live content for older students. They can still ask questions and come on the screen with the teacher if needed. Oh is it that you might get intruders? Might be a tiny risk though.

@BBCK well yes that does make sense. It’s just Ive used it for adults as a hybrid but much smaller numbers. I hadn’t thought about the IT capacity/ that does make sense

We've tried live streaming lessons. Gdpr nightmare as it's technically data about your child. Getting the webcam etc set up to a useful position is impossible in most classrooms due to the layout. School WiFi struggled with more than 2 live streams.

We were told to just go on Oak Academy and do the lessons on there. We weren’t given any thing else apart from that.

@2X4B523P

A little different but how would this work with children who are vulnerable if / when shielding resumes? Would they not be entitled to anything?

No idea how this will work but teachers can’t be expected to set work for shielders and teach normal lessons.

Although the plan seems to be to take some people off the shielding list and add others on so as children are generally less affected maybe the majority of children will be taken off the shielding list so they will still be able to attend school.

There is a link to where work can be found.

Not sure what more you’re expecting? So many kids will be off at different times it would be impossible to send home a personalised plan for each kid for 2 weeks

At my school, we are teaching hybrid lessons - so teaching to the students in the classroom but uploading resources to Teams and live-streaming our lessons to those pupils who can't be physically in the room. Homework is set and submitted on Teams.

I thought that with the return to school, the government had made it a requirement that schools provide for students who were isolating but that may only be in England.

Our school WiFi struggles to livestream internally - for assemblies and staff meetings. It definitely wouldn't cope with potentially 70 livestream to the outside world at once.

@OverTheRainbow88

There is a link to where work can be found.

Not sure what more you’re expecting? So many kids will be off at different times it would be impossible to send home a personalised plan for each kid for 2 weeks

This.

During lockdown I taught live to timetable throughout via Teams.

Last week I had a Yr 11 pupil isolating. Last Monday I stayed my before duty at 8. I think didn’t have my next break until 12.40 (20 minutes). I then had a dept meeting straight after school and as soon as that finished I had to leave to collect my children from their after school club before it closes.

Teachers won’t be able to set meaningful work for individually isolating pupils unfortunately. I’m struggling to find time to eat at the moment let alone send work home.

(On a side note we have desktops in class but they have no web cameras so couldn’t record the lesson. We don’t have school laptops)

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