No longer a national priority to keep schools open

[noelgiraffe]

The government has surreptitiously dropped its priority to keep schools open.

It has replaced it with a priority to “keep education open”.

Remote learning is now a viable alternative to keeping schools open (as opposed to last Monday when it was a matter for the high court).

In the DfE media blog, tweeted earlier today regarding the delayed start to term in January they say:

“ Is this an extension of the Christmas holiday?

No, this isn’t an extension of the holiday and we haven’t asked that the start of term is delayed.

All students will return to education from the first day of term. Secondary school and college students should learn remotely for one week except those in exam years, vulnerable young people and the children of critical workers. It remains our national priority to keep education open and we are not closing education for any period other than during the set holiday periods.”

Interesting development.

So what you’re saying is, EAL children don’t deserve a family Christmas

I'm saying that pupils attending a school where reading progress is -2.9 probably shouldn't miss an extra week of school unless absolutely necessary.

@Clavinova

So what you’re saying is, EAL children don’t deserve a family Christmas

I'm saying that pupils attending a school where reading progress is -2.9 probably shouldn't miss an extra week of school unless absolutely necessary.

No, you actually brought EAL into it. Awful.

That is a pretty disgusting generalisation

Why is it disgusting? The school is in Oldham - I apologise if I have mixed up religions.

@Clavinova

65 staff and pupils will now be isolating on Christmas Day due to a flurry of cases in a Trust that was going to move online for the last week of school and was overruled by Gav.

To be fair though 95.5% of the pupils at the school concerned have English as a second language - and reading progress at the school is well below average (-2.9) - therefore it's a difficult call as to whether those pupils should miss an extra week of face to face teaching for Christmas Day celebrations.

You are absolutely right! They NEED that 1 week of fluffing around. It doesn't matter that they will be sick, pass it on to parents or get long covid! That last week of fun and frolics will propel them and no cost is too high for that!

Really?
It's not about xmas celebrations, but about health. it's that easy. If gav didn't kick up a fuss than these kids wouldn't have contracted a virus that has the potential to cause long lasting harm.

Yes, I agree, the Christmas Day part is a red herring. That they were made to stay on in school for an additional week when it was KNOWN that cases were rocketing, has led to a large number of infections and a huge risk to family members and their communities.

The communities who are particularly at risk from Covid, if we're talking about Oldham, as well!

They NEED that 1 week of fluffing around

Hopefully teachers were trying to improve progress in reading - not 'fluffing around.'

@Clavinova

They NEED that 1 week of fluffing around

Hopefully teachers were trying to improve progress in reading - not 'fluffing around.'

Have you ever been in a school on the last week before xmas? Don't kid yourself...

They might have been finding that hard with spiralling absences and staffing crises.

And before any teachers object: let's be realistic. And by that time even if teachers weren't wrecked, the kids are.

@Piggyinblankets I've pmed you

@Clavinova

They NEED that 1 week of fluffing around

Hopefully teachers were trying to improve progress in reading - not 'fluffing around.'

Not nice.

You’re implying that EAL children should be in school regardless of the threat of Covid to themselves and their families. Quite distasteful.

These threads exist because parents and teachers are concerned about children’s education during a pandemic with very little guidance from government.

@Clavinova

They NEED that 1 week of fluffing around

Hopefully teachers were trying to improve progress in reading - not 'fluffing around.'

Do you not see how utterly unbalanced your insistence on maintaining those final few days of school were even though the infection rates were so high is? If not as a parent then as a fellow human being do you really not see that? Your views are a mirror of the dfe and Gavin Williamson. I find it disturbing that it had to be this hardline approach.

You’re implying that EAL children should be in school regardless of the threat of Covid to themselves and their families.

I didn't imply that at all - I said it was a 'difficult call' whether this particular school should close early for Christmas. Apparently schools in Scotland haven't broken up yet - why not? Does Nicola Sturgeon think Scottish children 'should be in school regardless of the threat of Covid to themselves or their families'?

That's whataboutery and scrabbling @Clavinova . Sturgeon definitely isn't suggesting that EAL children need face to face teaching more than they need safeguarding from a serious virus. I'm really shocked at the othering implicit in your thinking here.

You could tell from Boris's ending sentence that schools will be affected by the new strain

That's whataboutery

Are you saying then, that EAL children with reading progress well below average are not disadvantaged? Why did Keir Starmer want to keep schools open in London up until the end of term? Is he 'utterly unbalanced' as well?

Scottish terms are very different from English terms. That's why.

Surely the most logical solution is years 7-9 home learning for a month or two. Years 11 and 13 in full time and testing weekly and 10&12 in part time? That way the two years taking exams are less disrupted.
Less kids in schools = more room and teaching staff so reduce class sizes and bubbles down to 15?

@Clavinova

That's whataboutery

Are you saying then, that EAL children with reading progress well below average are not disadvantaged? Why did Keir Starmer want to keep schools open in London up until the end of term? Is he 'utterly unbalanced' as well?

Yes I would. Given the nature of this virus and having the data that LAs were acting on, yes insisting on forcing children into school was wrong and unnecessary. This obsession with reading progress. Of course it is important but not in the short term.

@Clavinova

They should run the risk of serious illness because they don't speak English as their mother tongue?

I am guessing (I might be wrong) that the families concerned do not celebrate Christmas Day - so the day itself is not the most important factor in the decision - I said it was a difficult call.

Muslim best friend and her family do hold family gatherings at Christmas. Though they don't celebrate Christmas. It is the only time of the year when everyone is off work and school.

In fact after Boris put us in tier 4 the other night she was very upset. She has had to cancel her party after spending so much time and money organising it.

@compulsiveliar2019

Surely the most logical solution is years 7-9 home learning for a month or two. Years 11 and 13 in full time and testing weekly and 10&12 in part time? That way the two years taking exams are less disrupted. Less kids in schools = more room and teaching staff so reduce class sizes and bubbles down to 15?

It wouldn't work like that. It would have to be rotas. When year 10 are on English, we're all teaching. You can't split classes that way. But locally determined rotas would work. We have 250 in year 11 - when we came back to classrooms in June, we had 25% in at a time as per the guidance. A local school has 40 in the year group. They were not allowed to exceed 25%.

Hopefully teachers were trying to improve progress in reading - not 'fluffing around.'
The days of a pointless last week of term have been long gone at every school I've worked at. There's teaching up to the end of term, but inevitably there isn't as much core content or big assessments because there's students out for carol concert rehearsals, music events, end of term shows that often do matinee performances to feeder primaries, sporting events, christmas fundraisers, end of term awards, christmas assemblies, and that's before the fact that attendance often drops at the end of term.

During Covid many of those things won't have happened, but in it's place there's been virtual assemblies, hundreds of students in and out, positive cases being announced most days with contact tracing, and a huge amount of disruption.

Surely anyone who is as close to education as you claim would know the reality of life in schools at the moment.

Clav, if it had been a school with a large EAL but Christian cohort - for example with a similar proportion of pupils with Eastern European languages as their first language - would you say the same?

Or a school with no EAL but a similar level of disadvantage and low reading progress?

Your posts are very, very close to being racist - your implication is that it is OK to risk the health of non-Christian. non-native-speakers within a significant Covid outbreak in a pandemic, on the basis of their faith and ethnicity?

On the 'fluff' question - in primary, we taught right up to the last morning of term, simply because so many of the usual end of term rituals were cancelled and we had to do something with children who still had to sit in rows, remain within their bubbles at all times and not interact indoors with any other member of the school.

There was no educational point to this - they, and their teachers, were so far beyond exhausted that no learning was going on. Don't be deluded that 'the presence of lessons with children in them' = 'actual learning'.