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?

Feeling lucky.
We were isolating on friday waiting for a test result (came back yesterday negative so back to school tomorrow).
My eldest in high school emailed teacher for the lessons that day. All replied with the work set for that lesson.
I contacted youngest teacher via the school home learning app and the teacher posted the work the class would be doing that day so she could complete at home.
Probably only got them because I proactively asked but from next week all high school work will be on teams so any isolating pupils can access it.
Primary haven't given us a plan going forward.

We got an email Friday saying my son had to isolate (year 3) and that they will be in contact on Monday (today) with work packs to do. Hopefully they do as they were a bit rubbish at the start of lock down and sent no work home till July.

People who were calling for effort (and resource) to be put into blended learning (to cover isolation, local or national lockdowns) got a bit drowned out alongside the fearmongers and were accused of not wanted schools to open at all, or just being totally unrealistic.

Now that the closures and isolations are really beginning to happen, suddenly we don't seem like fearmongering outliers.

But it may be too late to do anything about it for this term.

If your DC was in yrs 11 or 13 (and to some extent yr 10 and 12) wouod you be even remotely happy if your school, shut for 2 or more weeks plus they needed a couple of other isolations? When DC whose schools are providing blended learning will be sitting the same exams? Also pupils at schools that didn't have bursting bubbles in the first place?

1 big problem with live streaming lessons ( which I am supposed to be doing for any lesson where there is a student off due to Covid) is that the camera's don't pick up writing on the whiteboard (unless you have a far better camera that I own!) If I had a smart board then it would be different. This means the students who hear me , see what is on my screen , but it's really hard to teach hard mathematics without seeing what I am writing.

I'm not sitting at my computer when teaching so a webcam wouldn't work?
I'm amazed a pp said her school would bring in isolating children to work. That is against every rule.

@StillDumDeDumming

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?

It is possible. But. School need the tech (which most don’t have), teachers need the training and also the confidence.

The whiteboard is a bit of a nightmare, yes. I think some of it can be solved by taking a picture of the board and uploading that to Teams...

My IT skills have never been so tested as they have been over the last six months!

The DfE guidance requires schools to have online learning in place as soon as a child is off. Which is maybe a big ask, but on the other hand most schools set up the online system last term which should make it easier.

We will provide work for children who have a bubble close, but not for individuals. There isn't anyone available to set the work. It's more time consuming to do remote stuff than live in class stuff.

It depends on the school really. Parents might see how shocking behaviour is in some classrooms, with children being dumped in a mainstream class with no support, disrupting every lesson repeatedly due to lack of funding.

We are isolating while we wait for a test result.
I was told no school work because if they are showing symptoms then they are too ill to study.
I replied that day 1 the child had a temperature and thus we got a test. Day 2 they were recovered. Unfortunately it’s now day 6. We still don’t have the result and we’ve had no school work, despite my requests.

My children’s school (they’re Y10 and 13) is continuing to use the online platform to put on homework and they can also contact the teacher for help. So I’d expect that anyone self isolating would keep up with work that way and contact the teacher for specific advice. I know they’d have missed the face to face teaching. Would school not provide work if a child was off sick pre Covid? I just presumed they did (sure I remember this when I was at school!)

I wasn't expecting a personalised plan or anything, just something along the lines of "we read chapter 2, make sure you keep up".

I appreciate it must be a nightmare for teachers.

There seem to be two classes of answers.

a) teachers don’t want to do any extra work to help isolating students
b) it’s technically impossible to video a lesson. (I don’t see why it has to be live.)

I’ll just leave that there.

It’s not that I don’t want it, it’s that I can’t possibly find the time to set personalised work for 20ish lessons a week every week for god knows how long this will last. It’s an impossible ask. It’s not as simple as read chapter 2... we don’t tend to use textbooks here.

Most the lessons are uploaded to the online portal; students know how to access this.

It’s not that I don’t want it, it’s that I can’t possibly find the time to set personalised work for 20ish lessons a week every week

Don’t you have lesson plans you have to write already? A brief summary of those would seem better than nothing.

Two state schools here. One has the tech in place and have used for pupils joining in remotely and are confident they can provide it and wouldn't consider not.
Other school very vocal about safeguarding risks of live lessons (?) but did eventually provide audio over PowerPoint lessons, not sure what if anything they will provide but I hope they aim for best practice not least effort.
I work with children at a variety of schools and the private school kids of all ages barely missed a live lesson in front of their teachers remotely. Lots of the better local state schools had MS teams accounts and successfully taught a full programme. I don't want teachers overloaded. I do want my child to be able to review the lessons her peers are getting if she is off. A video of the PowerPoint and board, and the teachers voice might not be perfect but it would be adequate. I understand that there will be issues and anxieties but by now schools should surely be looking to model the best low cost solutions other schools have found.

I think partly it’s like when bus trackers came in. Bus drivers hated it as they felt they were being spied on at work. Similarly it seems some schools/teachers just don’t want to be watched while they work and so are just making up excuses.

I have two year 10s. Cases at both their inner city schools now, Birmingham, and we are expecting to get 'the text' at some point.

When we looked at Oak Maths in year 9 they said it was too easy for them. I understand Oak did stop at year 9 but is now accommodating higher year groups so in theory could
Is there any differation or is it one size fits all?

With areas like Birmingham and Bolton ww will see more schools sending pupils home. Such areas will be suffer more inequality if there are regular disruptions and students can only access the basics.

It makes me angry at the Govt who were warned about this and failed to invest, make a plan and protect staff and children. The final insult is not having a world class testing system that they also promised, prioritising school staff and pupils.

sorry, ignore the words 'in theory could'

Re livestreaming...there are all kinds of safeguarding concerns including people hacking in to the 'live' stream. It has happened already, although not often and I don't think most of us parents (I know, it is a generalisation forgive me, at least I certainly am not...) are au fait with the constantly changing hacker techniques that are going around.

Don't mean to be alarmist but we all know of stuff that creeps in with IT at home even that we would rather not have, despite internet blocks with providers etc.

I can understand that certain things are possible and others not.
Having said that I've also noticed that online provision varies across the country. Some schools and areas seem to do it very well and others hardly at all.

Here is a practical tip. I spent a number of hours searching the websites of different primary schools in England/Wales. Some have beautifully set out material for every year and so I used that during lockdown. If your child is isolating this idea may work again.

To start myself off I looked at the league tables per area to pick out the top schools. This seemed to be correlated to how much helpful material they had online.

Yes, middleager I agree with your last post especially the last bit, makes my blood boil too.

I'm a practical person so just kind of plod on...

One of my dc's secondaries (I can't remember if the other said it as well, but the schools in our town do try to work to the same levels) said in a letter that for any isolating students, teachers would be expected to upload that days work by 1800 each day, for pupils to complete the next day, so they'd effectively never be more than one day behind.

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

This is against national guidance - if you're self-isolating you're not even allowed past your front door!