What support did your school offer over lockdown?

[Gobacktothe90s]

Not a teacher bashing three just wondering what support was offered over lockdown that you thought was useful.
Was any other support other than online homework offered?

Full online timetable of lesson assigments from day 1 of lockdown. Occasional phonecall from form tutor/pastoral team. One video call parents' evening-style chat from form tutor (who passed on feedback from subject teachers). More phone/online support was given to vulnerable kids and those with SEN.

One work sheet a week covering all subjects. We received no feedback as they asked for the work to be submitted when they went back to school. We received one phone call at the end of May due to year 6’s being brought back from 1 June. In comparison, a friend teaches at our local private school and had a full timetable, every lesson went online in addition to form groups and pastoral care. I think a balance of the two approaches was needed, a bit online and a bit self taught. If we lock down again we plan to pay for online schooling.

At the start, very little. Both DH and I were extremely busy WFH at this time, so the kids quickly got used to entertaining themselves all day/interrupting Zoom calls.

Gradually the pace picked up, so it then felt that we were bombarded with content. Lots of websites to visit, fun things to try, worksheets that were irritatingly in pdf format so I had to copy it out by hand (no printer or interactive format). The easy work seemed like a waste of everyone’s time and it was hard to convince the children to attempt the more challenging stuff so we all ended up in tears.

I reached out to the teacher a few times who was lovely and reassuring, but I still felt bad for not uploading the work.

I agree with a previous poster that a weekly sheet of desired learning objectives would have been useful. Most of the content I could imagine working well in a school setting with the enthusiastic teachers and the children geared up to learn, but I just was on the receiving end of eyerolls from the DC.

Our teachers did recorded bedtime stories which were nice. More pre-recorded video content would have been very welcome, and if there was a way of printing off the sheets so that we could collect a learning pack that would be great.

I’m not a fan of Google classroom, my young DC don’t seem to take on board the comments there. I would say that 99% of the work done was by me (copying things out to be ignored, trying to take photos to make it look like the kids were doing the activities, uploading said photos, only to have to go through the same painful exercise the next day). I felt much better when I gave up trying to do the school work.

On the positive side we made great progress with times tables, spelling and reading. But we just did that off our own bats, nothing to do with school.

That was therapeutic!

Last term our school provided 5 live Teams lessons a day plus a 15 minute class get-together every morning as a sort of pastoral session where all the kids could chat to each other and get a bit of contact.
I hope they do the same if it happens. It worked pretty well.

One email a week with a list of work to be completed - not followed up if it wasn't, not marked, no feedback. Hope they all had a nice break!

I’m sure there is a better way of organising home education than relying on individual schools. The BBC did a fab job, I can’t understand why the government didn’t do more on a national basis. Most schools follow the national curriculum after all.

Not very much at all. DD had been having different work set all year and 2 weeks into lockdown. Then nothing. Work was set on the school website which was printer heavy. Nothing marked.

One phone call end of July. I emailed work completed with photos each week. I got two short replies.

I know they were busy with key worker children, but my child is important too. I haven't quite got over how they 'abandoned' poor DD. She has some additional needs, so we could have done with some support. We managed, and she's not lost any academic ground. Socially it's another matter.

Our school very quickly went onto google classroom and there was a combination of live lessons, recorded ones and work set and marked.

They did weekly assembly. They have a computer set up in every class now incase anyone is isolating they can still join in.

It's an independent school, I think many parents would have complained about fees if they hadn't got something sorted quickly.

Many independent schools nearby didn't do anything really.

Year 3 child - weekly work set - reading, writing, maths, science, humanities, art, spellings. Got a weekly phone call too. Other mini activities/competitions were also set. Weekly star of the week for home learning in each year group was also given and certificate sent home.

It's become sort of irrelevant now what work was set during lockdown. Nothing is going to be done to the schools where no work was set or where only small pieces of work was set. The only thing schools can do now is see where the gaps are and focus on these. The government have implemented (in law) that all schools MUST give remote learning for those students off for covid related reasons. I think we can be assured that our children will receive some learning if they are off school.

I spoke to the children in care in my tutor group at least 3 times a week, and their social worker about twice in that time. I spoke to the vulnerable kids in my tutor group weekly. I went round to a vulnerable tutees house for a face to face chat in their garden.... a few came to my garden to get some fresh air and do some gardening.
Our school took food parcels to families we thought were struggling and gave some Asda vouchers we usually hand out at Christmas.

Lesson wise- we had to follow our usual timetable and upload work for that time. Made sure the whole syllabus was planned and online for
Exam classes. We took printed out work to families we knew wouldn’t have a computer. We had to give fortnightly feedback to KS3 and weekly to exam classes. We were on a rota to go into school for key workers kids and vulnerable.

We had the odd phone call and the odd piece of work that was never followed up. My Daughter did some work, my son did nothing the whole time he was off as he had nothing to do.

My sons’ primary school provided a fantastic variety of home learning resources but the outcome for individual children would have been very much dependent on how much input a parent/carer could give.

Due to their poor efforts I am anti shutting school together with the evidence that younger children don't appear to spread the virus

There isn't any evidence of this. So because your school didn't do what you consider to be good, you want millions of other people put at higher risk of transmission. Super, nice logic.

OP - there were loads of threads about support other than academic stuff. More than 20 I reckon.

Due to their poor efforts I am anti shutting school together with the evidence that younger children don't appear to spread the virus I agree with you.

Primary teacher, Scotland. Online meeting with kids offered daily, 3 lessons uploaded- an exercise task, literacy task, numeracy task and social studies task. Marked. Asked to read 30 mins per day. Optional extra task too. Also worked in the hub once a week. I have a 3 and 1 year old and husband working out the house throughout. It was full on! I was a bit frustrated by how much we were doing when schools in same council were uploading a generic grid weekly. Yet we were all paid the same.

*oops - crucially this is a state school, not private!

To be honest, I think it's all irrelevant now anyway as the DfE were very clear in March that the 'curriculum was suspended.'

Schools were asked to provide care for keyworker children, including holidays, as the priority. I know it was shit, but that was the order.

No guidance at all was given about how to support home learning until much, much later. In fact, it's only very recently become a requirement for schools to do so.

The fact that a lot of schools did take it upon themselves to provide homelearning was off their own backs. So some schools did, some didn't.

FWIW, my own school switched to providing daily lessons pretty much straightaway having had half an hour of training on how to use Teams. That was a quick learning curve!

My own DC's schools were VERY different - daily lessons from one, nothing at all from the other. Frustrating but understandable- that school is near a major hospital so a LOT of keyworker children.

That's why there was such a discrepancy. Hopefully, things have changed and schools have to shut again or if classes are self-isolating, provision will be much improved.

@Hairbrush767

Primary teacher, Scotland. Online meeting with kids offered daily, 3 lessons uploaded- an exercise task, literacy task, numeracy task and social studies task. Marked. Asked to read 30 mins per day. Optional extra task too. Also worked in the hub once a week. I have a 3 and 1 year old and husband working out the house throughout. It was full on! I was a bit frustrated by how much we were doing when schools in same council were uploading a generic grid weekly. Yet we were all paid the same.

Yep!! Same here Hairbrush. Could have written your post.

Haha @theluckiest maybe we work in the same school! Also totally agree with your post.

I guess one of my the positives is I felt we'd banked some good will and good communication for August.

I think what we got was pretty poor

Y4 had work initially sent daily, then weekly once some year groups returned. Mainly generic worksheets, and we weren’t even sent the answers to the White Rose maths. We were told at the start none of the work would ever be marked, and if they couldn’t do anything, don’t worry as they would catch them up when they went back (except he never did as he left for middle school). No phone calls, nothing to mark the end of their time at the school. He and I felt abandoned.

Y6 was a bit better (different school), work set daily, but only put on the website at 9am so difficult to plan ahead. Daily messages on the website from the teachers, and shout outs to people who sent work in. One piece of work a week to be submitted for the teacher to briefly comment on. We had a phone call from the teacher too

Both schools are now planning a more interactive approach with live or recorded lessons in the event of future closures though

Dd2 - nursery - fab, daily story, videos, ideas for work, open dialogue and share pics to keep social side up. Super online transition to p1.
Dd1 - same school primary, weekly grid, daily lit and numeracy work, twice weekly extra work e g. Music lesson from a video.
Feedback on all work submitted, no pressure to submit.

My school dept sen, used seesaw, daily lessons, initially full timetable of activities supported by some videos etc. Parent feedback meant we reduced content to daily story, morning video, num and lit lesson. Feedback given on all activities. All work set was individualised, parents could request printed options and more or specific lessins/videos. Slt phone call to all arents every 2 weeks. Worked in hub throughout as well.