School only providing 1 hour of live interaction a day!

[NotLookingTooGood]

What is everyone's school experience? I am going a little crazy. We have live online learning of 2 increments of 30mns (maths & english) a day + homework that we have to supervise.

What is everybody else's experience?
The school is relying entirely on us to do the work.

An hour a day live ( if young children) is loads!! Unless school is asking you to go out and buy books and plan lessons etc , you are NOT “ being asked to do everything “! Teachers are coping with children both IN and out of school; swathes of new directives; lesson planning; online lessons and technology, and marking and responding to emails and enquires- oh and possibly their own families as well!! You do realise lessons at primary school don’t involve teachers talking for even half an hour? We have long moved away from chalk and talk. There is usually a short whole class input then the children do work either independently or in small groups. Funnily enough the teacher (When in class) managed to support 30 individuals! You are being asked to encourage your own child. If set work is Pre-recorded or you are given links this is way better than live lessons for your child if they are younger because they can work at their pace, stop and ask/ clarify if they are confused, and do it at a time that works/ fits in with peoples’ other daily commitments and when they are receptive to learning. ( Don’t forget in school they have regular breaks and often hands on/ physical learning.)You are not “doing it all”, you are being given the opportunity to support your child’s learning during an unprecedented time - with ( hopefully) plenty of on call support and back up from teaching staff currently doing double the work load ( adapting lessons for online is incomparable in planning and preparation to in class learning - especially for young children who would normally have plenty of equipment- denes, cubes, number lines, numicom, word mats, etc to support them). It’s very hard on everyone, but with encouragement and a bit of goodwill and imagination ( cooking for maths, reading for English etc) young children can be helped through this and will catch up academically ( you may have seen the post from a chap who missed 3 years schooling due to war, spoke no English, but then learnt well and went on to do a degree and masters!!!)

@salsamummy

Secondary private here. Full timetable online and music lessons. Same as last lockdown. My son says he has a headache from been on the laptop all day.

We wouldn't want a full timetable. We have asynchronous learning. It's flexible and there's more than enough for the children to do.

@ojr1609

I’m a teacher and we are providing a normal secondary timetable of live lessons - 5 per day for all subjects.

My son’s in y6 and is having no live interaction at all. I think it’s shocking personally and feel that all schools should offer something once a day that is ‘live’. No phone calls from the school either this week

We have the same, Year 8 has full timetable, much, much better than last lockdown and she is actually working. Year 6 has some maths worksheets to print off the website (complete with answers) reading and has had a couple of PowerPoints with questions. No direct contact off the school at all. I completely fail to see why if teachers are in with key worker kids in year groups, they can’t stream/record them explaining work to both the kids in the classroom and online at the same time.

I also think that schools have been dumped in it by the government and left with very little time to prepare, they also were not given any extra resources to meet the demands of covid.

So expecting them to have prepared and printed off a load of material ready for lockdown is unreasonable, especially for primaries, the way lockdown happened, actually the day after term started.

Really. Seriously. OMFG. Have schools not got enough shit going on without that!!

No printed here pls thinking of amount of paper

None here. Work Uploaded on google classroom and to be completed and uploaded certain days. I would hate live classes. Both key workers but kids being minded by grandmother so cant expect her to do it all

DS (15) logs on at 830am and has full timetable of lessons until340pm via teams and exercise tasks daily. He’s certainly not missing out but it is exhausting for all of us making sure he stays focused. No homework as such but they are expected to finish the work from the lesson the same day, after school time if they didn’t manage it in the lesson. We have an online parents evening next week too.

@Ellie56 do you really think anyone should do anything suggested by gavin Williamson. People should be contacting Ofsted unless they have completed the full school formal complaints procedure. Don’t be that person who distributes this shit.

@tubbycustardtummyache... thank you 🙂. This has been literally the longest week ever for teachers what with live lessons, online work, tutor time, supervising keyworker kids etc. Just thank you for being kind

Dd2 is in Primary school ks2 and gets no live interaction and around an hours work a day if we stretch it out. I was hoping it would be better next week, but the time table has just come through and it’s not. They are bulking out the work with colouring in and yoga / dancing activities. They’ve said they will do live lessons if they are able because they very stretched having to look after 150 key worker kids. To put this into perspective, the school usually caters for 650. 4 teachers in my child’s year group, plus support staff and all they can manage is 1 hour of work a day.
On the other hand, my secondary school kids have a full day every day.

Secondary - live Google classrooms tutor time every morning, then follow the timetable with a combo of live teaching and working on own. I've not had to get more involved than popping my head in to make sure he is working
Primary y6 - each day set work via purple mash. A combination of pre recorded teachers, links to worksheets, teacher available to answer questions from kids.
I need to be heavily in the work, can't leave him to do it by himself. Once a week live time would be good to keep motivation going but I think we will get a phone call from teacher at some point.
Overall happy with the learning provided in the circumstances. Wouldnt dream of complaining - think schools are doing an amazing job considering the constantly changing goalposts at very short notice

I think it’s interesting that people see oak national Academy and white rose maths as second rate. White rose in particular is a leader of outstanding maths provision - it’s why so many schools are now using it. I’ve also been very impressed by the Oak materials - the first ones were not so great but the sessions my DC did today were excellent. No it’s not quite the same as having a teacher that knows you, but they’re not resources to be sniffed at.

There is no expectation on the school to provide any sort of 'live' lesson. The government direction is that 'remote learning' must be provided but as usual, it's not clear.

There seem to be a lot folk not realising that teachers are still having to teach the key worker/vulnerable children in school plus plan, prepare, upload and mark remote learning. That's double the workload in a profession already under considerable pressure.

By providing even 5 minutes of 'live lessons' your school is already going beyond the direction set out by the Government. Well done to them IMO.

@mumofferalkids

If you recorded my typical lesson input and streamed it, you'd learn little to nothing.

A virtual lesson is completely different to a live lesson. All resources have to be on the screen (usually most of the teaching is done at my whiteboard). All of the teaching has to be done sitting in front of the screen (normally teachers rarely sit down). The teacher can't see what the children are doing. The work has to be suitable to be accessed without a printer. The work has to be suitable to be accessed offline as well as online, for children sharing devices. The work has to be suitable to be printed and sent home, for children without devices.

Chucking a zoom link at you when I'm doing normal teaching would be easy. Your kids wouldn't learn a thing.

My 2 secondary age kids both have a full day of team meetings. My primary child has nothing live, but there is a good variety of content on Seesaw with links to bitesize, white rose maths, some Twinkl sheets, a video of the teacher reading the class reader and we get feedback when we submit work. They've listened to parent feedback (very affluent intake with engaged parents and school is very good) and the content has been improving since the beginning of lockdown and they have deliberately chosen not to do live lessons so the content can be accessed at any time to minimise conflict over devices (they said they have received 4 devices to distribute to pupils, there are 630 kids at the school).

Primary live learning no good for many families. We make a video for each lesson (4 per day- reading, writing, maths, foundation subject) so content is personalised for the class and tasks are clearly modelled and adult help should be minimal. Live check-in every day for 30 mins or so to monitor well-being/have a group activity, etc. Work is emailed in, posted on padlet or done using purple mash (online writing, etc). All work is responded to. Paper packs of work for families with minimal tech have been made and hand delivered by teachers, followed up with regular phone calls. Ch not joining in check in or sending work in are telephoned to see what support is needed. It is truly knackering.

No live interaction. Our Yr3 child has 2-3 recorded lessons to watch each day, ranging from 20 to 45 minutes. He then does the exercise afterwards. Other subjects are worksheets or watching an online video and completing a task.
Our Reception child has a live Maths and Phonics session everyday, then a short exercise. The rest of his activities are chosen from one of two grids.

I’m actually very close to handing in my notice. I’ve had enough. I’m CV in school and I know for a fact at least 5 in have 1 parent on furlough. We have most classes almost full. 29 in one class. In London where 1 in 30 have Covid and hospitals at capacity. We have 20% staff off with Covid. Over 60% kids in school. Only a matter of time before we have to start closing bubbles and those that genuinely need a place won’t have one, that includes the ICU nurse parent if a child in my class. Putting more strain on out local hospital. But you know Dfe guidance says that’s ok. It’s like the government just paid lip service to schools closing as making it very difficult to refuse placed on their guidance.
I know that it’s hard I’m having to leave my children alone at home to homeschool so I can go in to work to babysit lazy arseholes kids. I can’t send mine in as it will mean my family mixing with over 100 other households as my youngest class in primary has 27 in, my class has 23 and my eldest at secondary. Both myself and husband are key workers and unable to work from home. We are breaking our backs to make things work, doing a full day in work then helping with home schooling when we get in. But the parents in my school are sat at home on furlough taking up places.
This lockdown will last until at least Easter if everyone keeps behaving like this.
I really don’t know how much more of this I can take.

Year 11 and literally had about 30 mins a day of work set and nothing for months for some subjects. Finally next week we will get 3 hours a week of live learning. Prob only because government put in a requirement. The school things it down to us but we both working full time and we cannot take this on. As a result my child is now depressed with no structure and can barely be bothered to get out of bed and brush hair. When they returned last term she was so happy she worked really hard. I just so upset. Other local comps have all day lessons online and work set.
We are simply not all in same boat.
How do I complain to ofsted ? Will it make any difference ? I’ve written several times to the school and phoned as have others

Mine (yrs 2&4) have around 30-45mins of live teaching every day. The younger one also has 30mins twice a week as catch up with class, they did show & tell today.

Other than that daily English/maths/history this week via teams, either photographing and uploading work or completing in word and attaching that.

It’s been brilliant this week, bit of confusion for the younger one today, but they can do most on their own, which lets me get on and work.

I'm teaching 5 hrs a day. Some lessons are full on live teaching whilst others may start with live teaching and then move into online tasks. I've also got lessons where they do a task and then come back to talk about what they did.

Teachers has ZERO notice to completely redo their planning. They are once again having to work with a method of teaching with which they weren't trained for, and may not be comfortable with. They may well be having to home school their own kids at the same time. Many are in school still, teaching the key worker kids and vulnerable kids who are still in school - that's a lot of juggling going on.

My DS4 (KS2) has a lot of live online learning. 1hr English and 1 hr maths every day plus 1 hr each of PE, Music, Science, Art and PSHE spread over the week. He also has Google classroom activities. Trouble with that is sharing the laptop with DS2 and DS3 (KS4) who don't have the live teaching but do have assignments to complete on Google classroom.

My youngest GD is in Reception. She has 3x10 minute zoom sessions, with worksheets to follow, and a 15 minute story session at the end of the school day.