When schools were shut last year SOME teachers were arguing that they couldn’t provide online teaching for safeguarding reasons. I have now witnessed one of those teachers sharing a petition for schools to move to online learning. Is it any wonder there’s “teacher bashing” going on?!
The GOVERNMENT decided the curriculum was suspended.
As many of us said at the time, a school's ability to run remote learning is hugely variable and dependent on the school context.
Some schools I've worked in were schools where most children had access to an appropriate device to access online materials, if not live lessons. Other schools I've worked in moving to online learning, especially the holy grail of full time time of live lessons that some of here insisted on, would be the sort of move that would severely limit over half the school's ability to be educated.
On here there was a huge amount of complaining with very little consideration to the fact that schools are different, and there was a lot of 'but the private school the road does...' from posters who couldn't (read wouldn't) engage their brain to realise that the cohort and context of a private school differs from a state school.
Schools and teachers said that to run remote online learning effectively would require many families to be provided with devices and relevant internet connections. The government weren't forthcoming. The solution according to some on here was that teachers needed to think positively and ask the community to give them laptops. When the government finally announced a plan to provide devices, they offered a tiny fraction of what pupils needed and then headteachers were told they weren't going to get the number offered (remember already less than needed for pupils).
There were absolutely safeguarding concerns surrounding live teaching. As the situation developed schools found solutions, did training, devised policies. That is the sensible thing to do rather than shift onto live lessons with cameras and microphones whilst hoping for the best.
The provision last lockdown was patchy and some schools didn't provide enough (and by this I mean didn't do enough, not the MN whinge of 'my child's teacher used twinkl and I think they should have made the same worksheet from scratch because I've got a chip on my shoulder'). But what people are missing is that the government collapsed the curriculum and didn't give guidance on what was expected of schools.
My major issue is that the vast majority of posters who are teacher bashing (so not saying what happened in their DC school), is that they generally pay almost zero attention to what was actually going on in education. Instead they were determined to have a good old whinge about 'teachers' and make stupid comments like 'teachers don't want to do their jobs... teachers want schools closed... what ARE they actually doing?'
Even now, Boris has said household mixing in schools isn't safe (just a few days after threatening councils with legal action for trying to go remote learning for a few days to protect their pupils' families before Christmas). SAGE have said similar. Expert opinion is that mixing levels in schools are concerning. The unions have said the same.
What are people on here moaning about? Mean teachers who don't want to teach and don't care about families.