3-5 Teaching Hours for remote learning?

[Ohbabybab]

I heard Gavin Williamson say this is the Commons today.
Anyone know what that means in practice? Is there any guidance yet?

Primary teacher here.
I think the guidance sets parents, teachers and children up to fail. Parts of the guidance, which is well-meaningly open to interpretation, is being disingenuously skewed by parents who are feeling upset about the limitations of online learning. Upthread, pps are discussing their DC's online provision in terms of "an offer", with which they are not impressed. I could weep. Day 1 of lockdown proper, and we are not fucking pleased with our "offer". OK... PPs feeling disappointed that schools are not "better prepared". Most schools have prepared by setting up platforms and buying subscriptions for apps and distributing log in details since the autumn. That's preparation. The fact that those platforms are in some cases not yet populated with activities is because until Monday night, teachers were told categorically that schools would be safe, and to plan accordingly. Preparing relevant, engaging, meaningful provision takes ages, frequently as long, if not longer, than it takes to deliver.
Provision for class based learning is totally different, best practise allows for differentiation through learning styles, and very importantly for primary aged children right up to Y6, is tactile resources and interactivity. This can not be replicated in online teaching via Zoom. My gripe is that I and thousands of colleagues will have spent a week of the hols preparing and resourcing gold standard practical lessons for our classes, and we are now required to turn on a penny and try to turn our class based lesson preparations into remote learning. This stuff takes time, lots of it.
A PP said that if she got wind that the children at school were somehow benefiting from more teacher interaction and resources, she'd complain. Why? So many children in school are there on a vulnerable or SEND ticket. They need all the extra everything they can get! And it will be amazing if it benefits them.
And whoever poo-pooed the 'welfare call', that made me so sad. I've spent nearly 4 hours today, ringing parents to connect after the holiday, check that they have access to sufficient tech, see if they need any practical support, talk through how to set up accounts if they have been having trouble etc. I've been trying to help.
I know it's late, it's been a long day (first email at 6:32am), and only just getting into bed, but some of the comments here makes me wonder why I bother.

Hmmm, if it can be as low as three hours and that includes ALL LEARNING, sounds OK to me as long as it's for kids aged about 7 or over who are able to read independently to a certain extent.

Could be three short videos (recorded) of 15 minutes each (not necessarily something teachers have made--something ready made should be fine), worksheets which practice the content taught in the videos, some reading comp work, and some silent reading time. If all that was included, three hours sounds doable to me.

If they mean 3-5 hours of Zoom lessons, that would be mad.

I think everyone needs to be patient about the fact that it's going to take a while for schools to get into the swing of this. They've had about eight seconds notice to get all this sorted out.

(Oh, and I guess some writing work could be included in the above)

The home school educator explained to me that 3 hours of learning at home a day is enough, she went on to break down school days and roughly only 3 hours actual learning happens after breaks, lunch, assembly etc.

A PP said that if she got wind that the children at school were somehow benefiting from more teacher interaction and resources, she'd complain. Why? So many children in school are there on a vulnerable or SEND ticket. They need all the extra everything they can get! And it will be amazing if it benefits them.

@AdultHumanFemale But plenty are not and our children are at home having their life chances dwindle away because they will be competing with those who got an education and they’ll be the ones to get the better qualifications and there is not a thing we can do about it to for our children - it’s very upsetting to know I have no control over this and is based on the career I have chosen. And now you affirming my fears has sent my anxiety through the roof

And then today I hear from a teacher friend that she has a class of 30 keyworker children! Well that’s the same as if all children were in school. Why is my child’s life chances being ruined when the action to ‘close’ the schools is not going to help reduce the spread and keep teachers safe so that we can get the rest of them back in quickly. Surely teachers who were refusing to teach on the grounds of safety can’t now feel safe in the classroom, yet the complaints and legal action has now stopped. I don’t get it

I think part of the trouble is people have an incorrect view of how much learning happens in school in each day.

Yes they are in the building 9-3:30, so 6.5 hours. But on an average pre-covid school day, when you take off break, lunch, registration, assembly, moving between rooms, settling down, packing up, ordinary disruptions - that's a lot of time eaten up.

I have no problem with that. But you can't then say they should be online in lessons from 9-3:30, as that isn't comparable and will try their brains and eyeballs.

This country is obsessed with quantity over quality, if rather have three really good hours than six crappy hours. But I'm sure the government don't agree!

[quote Ohbabybab]@caringcarer Thanks for this. He says ‘teaching’ which to me means active guided teaching not just activity to do independently but I guess we’ll have to see when the guidance is released[/quote]
This would be absolutely dreadful. Every lesson includes large chunks of independent work, surely? Otherwise isn't it just a really boring lecture from which they'd learn almost nothing?

Sorry posted too soon - need to be careful to focus on learning not teaching. I sense a desire to make teachers visibly 'teach' for many hours.

What I want is my children to keep learning.

There is absolutely no way I can supervise my 2 primary DCs in 3 hours learning a day. I'm working. I would also like us to get out for a walk once a day (and I can't see how that will happen).

The provision in schools will be very different to the provision at home for children with working parents.

I have no idea how we are going to get through this. The pressure I feel this week is immense.

@inquietant

I think part of the trouble is people have an incorrect view of how much learning happens in school in each day.

Yes they are in the building 9-3:30, so 6.5 hours. But on an average pre-covid school day, when you take off break, lunch, registration, assembly, moving between rooms, settling down, packing up, ordinary disruptions - that's a lot of time eaten up.

I have no problem with that. But you can't then say they should be online in lessons from 9-3:30, as that isn't comparable and will try their brains and eyeballs.

This country is obsessed with quantity over quality, if rather have three really good hours than six crappy hours. But I'm sure the government don't agree!

I would not call these things disruptions; the inbetweeny bits are also learning.

I can only speak from the perspective of providing learning at secondary. At our high school teachers have to be online for each class on their timetable. The work is either live, or recorded, or perhaps powerpoint, but the students are, ideally, doing it when it is on their timetable. We can then answer any queries, give assistance on the chat stream.
So, yes, high school would have five hours of learning a day, because they have five periods of learning at school. The key worker students are in school, following the same criteria. With T A support in their bubbles.
It's going okay so far.
As always, not all students are logged on, but some students are doing some work earlier or later, to suit them (and probably their families juggling lap top availability) and they can still email us queries etc.
Those that aren't engaging, will be followed up.

@AdultHumanFemale

Primary teacher here. I think the guidance sets parents, teachers and children up to fail. Parts of the guidance, which is well-meaningly open to interpretation, is being disingenuously skewed by parents who are feeling upset about the limitations of online learning. Upthread, pps are discussing their DC's online provision in terms of "an offer", with which they are not impressed. I could weep. Day 1 of lockdown proper, and we are not fucking pleased with our "offer". OK... PPs feeling disappointed that schools are not "better prepared". Most schools have prepared by setting up platforms and buying subscriptions for apps and distributing log in details since the autumn. That's preparation. The fact that those platforms are in some cases not yet populated with activities is because until Monday night, teachers were told categorically that schools would be safe, and to plan accordingly. Preparing relevant, engaging, meaningful provision takes ages, frequently as long, if not longer, than it takes to deliver. Provision for class based learning is totally different, best practise allows for differentiation through learning styles, and very importantly for primary aged children right up to Y6, is tactile resources and interactivity. This can not be replicated in online teaching via Zoom. My gripe is that I and thousands of colleagues will have spent a week of the hols preparing and resourcing gold standard practical lessons for our classes, and we are now required to turn on a penny and try to turn our class based lesson preparations into remote learning. This stuff takes time, lots of it. A PP said that if she got wind that the children at school were somehow benefiting from more teacher interaction and resources, she'd complain. Why? So many children in school are there on a vulnerable or SEND ticket. They need all the extra everything they can get! And it will be amazing if it benefits them. And whoever poo-pooed the 'welfare call', that made me so sad. I've spent nearly 4 hours today, ringing parents to connect after the holiday, check that they have access to sufficient tech, see if they need any practical support, talk through how to set up accounts if they have been having trouble etc. I've been trying to help. I know it's late, it's been a long day (first email at 6:32am), and only just getting into bed, but some of the comments here makes me wonder why I bother.

This! I am not a teacher, but a parent, I have 3 secondary school aged kids but folks, please, please be patient. Teachers found out about all this at exactly the same time as the rest of the country. You can't expect them to have managed to have set up seemless well functioning on line learning from end of school Monday to start of school Tuesday morning for goodness sake!Scools will be frantically getting things sorted, responding to the latest changes in guidance (every few hours or so probably!) and doing their very best to get things up and running. Don't forget up until a few days ago most secondary schools were spending hours figuring out how to facilitate mass lateral flow testing as well. The online learning will come. Dont stress it. This is only week 1. We are going to be in this for weeks, if not months. Take a deep breath and just be pateint!

I’m scared by all the insinuations that this is going to go on for ages, posters saying “be patient as it will take the school a while to get into the swing of this”. This isn’t going to be over in february is it

I also think it’s the nature of the beast that we’re all trying our best now, 3 days in. We’re not going to be able to keep this up until Easter. Last time parents juggling work started off with good intentions thinking it would be a few weeks, 3 months in and hardly anyone was engaging with the online work set by the schools.

I am very disappointed my kids aren't getting any live or recorded lessons.

However, there are 254 keyworker kids in their primary school. So, sadly it would be impossible for the teacher. The teacher must be very stretched teaching them and trying to do all the online work setting and marking too.

I wonder where these 3 hours come from for primary school children with parents that work FT.

In practice I am having to home school all day supplemented by the material provided by DCs primary. The 3 hour figure is for work set but...first it’s an average so if your DC takes 5 minutes to do all the maths, say, then I have to fill the remaining time. Second, my DC is not going to sit on his own in a room going through worksheets for even 3 hours a day.

Well that is absolutely ridiculous.
I teach secondary, and the whole timetable is online. Live lessons 5 x per day.
Regardless of what is going on at home for teachers or students.
So if I am teaching 5 lessons a day, who is teaching my primary kids?
So many mixed messages and such high expectations on students and staff. Set up to fail again.

I’m scared by all the insinuations that this is going to go on for ages, posters saying “be patient as it will take the school a while to get into the swing of this”. This isn’t going to be over in february is it

February is the earliest date, the legislation end date is 31st March.

In all honesty, looking at the predicted state of hospitals in 2-3 weeks' time, I have mentally prepared for the full term at home. Doesn't mean I'm thrilled!

MumsGoneToIceland, good morning. I really didn't mean to raise your anxiety levels. I am sorry. I can tell that you, like so many other parents, teachers and children are feeling the full weight if this dire situation and are, quite rightly, just wanting to ensure the best provision possible for your child. It's grim.
But let me offer some reassurance from a primary perspective; children are only 'falling behind' on an arbitrary scale of attainment imposed on them by the DfEE. I teach in a school with a very transient community where pupils are regularly out of school for fairly long periods of time for international travel purposes, or having arrived at our school after extended periods of not accessing formal education on account of their parents' careers taking them across continents, usually to new academic or medical institutions, or arriving from having been in education in countries where children start formal learning much later. In my experience, children adapt and catch up so quickly! Your child will have missed 12 or 13 weeks in the spring / summer approximately, depending on where you are (and possibly another couple of weeks while self isolating during the autumn?), but this gap is not permanent, and will be closed. Teachers will be vaccinated in due course, normal schooling will resume, and your child will get back on track, along with all their peers. I work in a very deprived area with very poor engagement with remote learning during the spring and summer terms, but in reality, after a few weeks of brushing back up on some basics in September, we continued with regular curriculum provision as planned, and pupils were accessing this just fine.
Please try not to worry and compare too much. And be patient. I'm off to deliver a practical topic / English lesson on zoom, the in-class preparation for which would be 20 minutes tops, but this time has easily been trebled as have had to prep a whole new set of visuals and interactive online resources to give the same 'effect' as classroom delivery. These are going to be looong days for teachers.
Everyone is feeling the pressure. The key is not to let this trickle through to our pupils and DC, of course.

People on MN and the national press are reporting that some schools have 75% of their pupils in this week. How on earth is a class teacher supposed to supervise/teach 22 children in the classroom, and teach online to the 8 at home? How does that physically happen for 5/6/7yos?

It's an utterly ridiculous expectation all round.

That's before you get to the 5yo has to share the computer with their 7yo sibling in Y2 but their lessons are at the same time

So, @Ohbabybab how old are your children? How many do you have? Do they have a computer each?

@KrakowDawn
Not sure why your sentence starts with a 'so?!' I don't think asking for an education for my child is unreasonable, particularly when others are being educated properly. I have 3 but two are little and DD is 10. And yes I'm lucky that we had the resources to buy her a laptop for Christmas.

[quote Ohbabybab]@KrakowDawn
Not sure why your sentence starts with a 'so?!' I don't think asking for an education for my child is unreasonable, particularly when others are being educated properly. I have 3 but two are little and DD is 10. And yes I'm lucky that we had the resources to buy her a laptop for Christmas.[/quote]
I think it'd be good to try to dial it down a bit, for both your sake and your daughter's.

She is 'getting an education', all be it less than in a standard year.

It is week one of a situation that teachers had less than 24 hours' notice of.

Your daughter isn't being victimised. Give the school a little time to catch their breath.

I do think you're being a bit unreasonable.

@inquietant If you read earlier I have said exactly that... I'm not being unreasonable to be concerned that there is a disparity between learning and I'm not happy to have months of worksheets and BBC bitesize when others are getting education from the teacher as usual.

@inquietant I do object to being told to 'dial it down' when I've only asked what this Government legislation means. No where have I said what my expectations are of the school or my daughter other than I know that worksheets and bitesize are not a good enough education for a sustained period of time.

And as other teachers have said other schools have much better offers