What are your primary schools remote learning plans?

[KiwiKit]

Just that really. For those of you that are in areas where schools have shut. I’m not too pleased about what our school has put in place. No online lessons at all, just new work uploaded daily and a quick group call on a Monday morning and Friday afternoon. Exactly the same as the first time schools shut in March. My DS is in year 5. What are your schools doing?

How is it ok that there is this much variation in provision??

This is my biggest fear for if primaries shut in my area. Last time the infant school offered way more than the junior - the infants had a live assembly every day, along with live English and maths lesson every day. Juniors was just worksheets uploaded to a website with zero interaction from the teachers. I received one phone call the whole time.

I work in a job where I can be physically present for my kids working from home, but not mentally - I am in no way in a position to teach or explain anything, or help them if they get stuck. I probably don't qualify for a key worker place and cannot be furloughed. I need to know that my children can be taught with very little input from me, but I'm afraid that just won't happen.

Is is not ok that the provisions vary this much. In addition to better online provisions, many parents also send a lot of time helping their children. I must have spent about 6 hours a day, at least, helping our three children to make sure that they correctly assessed the online learning (which was several hours a day as per my post above).

My days included 1-to-1 help with the daily English and maths for our (then) Year-2 child and extensive help with the weekly science, arts and topics projects given by school. It also included quite a bit of help with English and topics for our (then) year-4 child.

My goal now is to help my now year-5 child more and also add some reasoning extensions and English comprehension and possibly some maths as the formal school day (live online lessons) ends at 3/3.30 with no homework. Our now year-7 child was self sufficient then and is ready to go now as all text books are online, we only need to stock up on work books. I expect to help her as well as required, possibly with maths and English, likely with assessment revision in chemistry and biology and definitely with mental support, cups of tea, snacks, food and chat. A lot of parents we know add online personal tutors for their children, but we cannot afford that and I am giving it my all. I am educated to masters level, but a sahm at the moment, so I am able to give extensive help as required across the curriculum also at secondary level.

I think this is going to increase the attainment divisions massively in society to a point where it will be difficult for the weaker children to catch up and it makes me want to cry. I feel especially for the key workers who are out there, every day, working for low pay as nurses in hospitals, in Tesco, collecting rubbish. Many will have some key worker provisions where their children are looked after, but not taught anything material. I remember a thread on this that brought tears to my eyes.

I would be more vocal, but my MH isn’t the greatest at the moment and I am dreading spending full working days supporting home learning for three children in a small flat with no outdoor space.

Technically the teachers are still on their holiday and whilst they do plan and use 'holidays' for work the Christmas ones are always a bit more sacred.

I hope what will happen is that you'll have something you deem 'better' by Tuesday afternoon.

Bear in mind that live lessons demand one device per child at home. This is not always possible in larger families. Therefore recorded lessons, or just information online, can be better to alleviate family tensions with resources they can afford.

Personally I really think it's more decent to talk to the school directly than snipe on here, implying lazy teachers or teachers who just want more time off. Not saying you were doing that, but threads like these encourage others to do so. Teachers are generally very decent human beings. They treat your child in the classroom like they would their own. They aren't highly paid, and for the record they don't get completely paid holidays. We get give weeks paid a year, like everyone else. Other holidays are unpaid but wages are evened across the months.

I've never seen so much dislike of teachers and criticism of them since browsing Mumsnet, which j have been doing for some years. It's a real eye opener! I just did not think I was so hated for my supposed laziness in my local community!

@CousinLucy More than anything I just wanted to see how the remote learning plans differed between schools. It’s been a real eye opener. I was half hoping that most schools would have a similar plan to ours so that my DS was at least on an even keel with his peers around the country. I can’t understand how some schools can offer online lessons (live or recorded) and some (like ours) aren’t doing much at all. This thread wasn’t started to trash teachers, so far I think the majority of people haven’t done that, I respect teachers hugely and I appreciate that this is mostly out of their control and they’re just doing what they’ve been told to do.

@KiwiKit I apologise if I got the wrong end of the stick. I think I might be over sensitive from previous threads from others!

I saw a headline today "We can't furlough our children's futures" or something similar, and FWIW I really do agree with that.

Come Wednesday morning I would contact your primary school and ask about recorded/live lessons. The thing is, primaries have loads at their fingertips. So my son had no live or recorded lessons from his teachers last lockdown BUT they gave us a Classroom Secrets log in which explained maths concepts brilliantly, and told us what BBC Bitesize to watch each day for English and Humanities. I asked his teacher once to ring him, because he was really down and depressed (at 9!) and that did the trick. But technically, for all my over sensitivity, I guess I didn't have much support from the primary day to day but the difference was, being a teacher, I could time my setting of work and marking around 'homeschooling' - which is a term I use loosely because it transpires that it's very tricky to 'teach' your own children!

All the best this week

@CousinLucy

Our teachers are doing an amazing job in providing the online learning. The go above and beyond, supported by amazing heads.

It must be possible to state several points at the same time

1. There is a pandemic and it may not be safe to have the schools open.

2. The distance learning provision varies wildly from almost nothing to a full day of easily accessible lessons and tasks.

3. Even with the best online learning provision, many primary school children will be unable to access this without significant parental support. This is especially true for the younger years.

4. The capacity and achievability between parents in terms of helping varies as much as the online provisions. Not everyone is able to explain secondary or even KS2 maths and comprehension.

5. The likely outcome of this is that the most vulnerable children will be left massively behind many of their peers.

I don’t think that stating these facts is teacher bashing. I think it is an important discussion to be had. In addition, the OP will not be able to have a discussion with her school without some insight into what other schools are doing.

Sorry, cross post. I think those are important points though.

No online lessons or live learning here and no weekly calls or check ins. Id be pleased if they got some kind of interaction like that.

We get emails with a bunch of attachments to work through. Daily messages and encouragement to the class on classdojo. This is also where we upload
Completed work for feedback. The feedback is usually high quality and encouraging and within a couple of hours. But thats it.

Obviously this will deteriorate again if the staff are teaching keyworker children f2f and trying to service the remote kids only in breaks etc. Not a dig at key worker kids at all just a fact that no member of staff can do both well!

I have sympathy OP. My secondary age and 6th form age dc had live online lessons daily during the first lockdown and I think the routine made a big difference to their wellbeing and engagement. I think a bear minimum should be a live lesson in the morning and one to start the afternoon. It doesn't even have to be teaching or the whole class, at the same time , just a chat, a check in, would do wonders to keep the home school relationship going and give kids a routine to work around.

Bare minimum

I am in London, so closed but my class bubble burst at the end of last term so was teaching remotely for the last 2 weeks. I can tell you that what my school will be offering is worlds apart from last time and I'm sure that will be the same for both schools. My school will be doing one full live lesson a day alternating between English and maths. In addition there will be a reading lesson, topic and the alternate maths or English. This will be both slides to learn from and activities. All activities must be submitted by 5pm via google classroom and all work submitted has to be marked and returned. Our PE coach ran online PE sessions. I have to say this worked extremely well before Christmas. I got to know my kids really well as we were able to message back and forth about the learning. I was online with them the whole day - from 9 - 4 ish, marking work as it was submitted - so instant feedback - more than they get in the classroom. For children not engaging, my TA was chasing behind the scenes with phone calls. The first live lesson was nerve wracking but the technology is straightforward and it was great having all the kids on mute!

most schools that should say

I hope it’s not online lessons. That will be too hard to manage whilst 2 other adults are working from home. I couldn’t cope with something too structured.
I’m hoping for worksheets again.
Then we will read, watch documentaries, workbooks and exercise.

@WentworthPrison

I'm a teacher and I've been in no way trained to teach online.

The risk of teaching online has been real for most of this year. Even if your school didn’t provide training why haven’t you at least read up on it. There must be tons of online courses to how best to provide online learning. Have you asked your head about providing some professional development in the area. I’m a nurse I had no knowledge on coronavirus and I have done several online courses about it, read up on infection control, and have done a vaccination course so I would be able to help give the vaccine. I come from a family of teachers and have always defended them as a group but my support is failing when I see quotes like this. My dd2 whole class had isolate in December and unfortunately the online learning was no better than in March.

DD (year 6) will have a full timetable of live online lessons according to the latest email. Last time around it was live maths and English and worksheets or recordings for other subjects. They also have a live form meeting in the morning and end of day check in. I am grateful that they have been excellent at adapting.

Thank you all for taking the time to contribute to this thread. The difference in provision is really concerning. It would be interesting to see the difference between state schools in affluent vs underprivileged areas.

@GabsAlot

dn in reception last time wasnt given anythng to do dont know if it was just her year though

Mine was given a daily challenge in reception - it took about five minutes max.