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.

Something that needs to be considered too: teaching staff will have had Covid or will get it soon. They will be knackered and on their knees. My two secondary children are getting full days of live teaching. Personally I don't think it's sustainable. They both said they would prefer more independent learning time.

We are getting none at all, we are back to worksheets getting sent out once a week. It is absolutely not the schools fault - over a third of DC are still attending so all staff are in their own classroom all day with their KW children.

One hour’s live teaching a day is loads.

My youngest is y6 and in a one form entry school with high numbers of keyworker families. His teacher can’t split himself in half, everyone’s doing the best they can.

@Whiskas1Kittens

Something that needs to be considered too: teaching staff will have had Covid or will get it soon. They will be knackered and on their knees. My two secondary children are getting full days of live teaching. Personally I don't think it's sustainable. They both said they would prefer more independent learning time.

Agree totally with this. Teaching five hours a day in front of a screen is totally unsustainable. Kids in front of screens all day isn’t good for them either.

Meant to say that the daily plan has video links for children to watch if they get stuck but the activities set are in printed work packs - a combination of work sheets and hands on creative activities.

I think give them the benefit of the doubt this week - they only found out about this from Boris on Monday night!

Not in Wales, we knew before Christmas it was going to be home learning on 6/7/8 of Jan at the least and the 5th and 6th were training days presumably to prepare.

No live lessons here and I'm glad about it (year 1). We do have prerecorded lessons. I'm trying to juggle homeschooling around my preschooler and baby so I'm glad there is no added pressure of having to be online at set times.

Full online for one at secondary, online start of every lesson then continue with work or full lesson online for other at secondary, primary has an optional 15 minute check in each day, 30 minutes reading, 30 minutes on times tables app and then one hour worksheets.

We get 2x pre-recorded session a day could be a story or a demo or whatever but as there's 2 teachers per year group 1 will be your classes teacher and then the other is the other classes teacher.

Rest is all tasks which you complete and submit then the teacher comments on. I like that too as the teacher addresses the child directly so she doesn't feel forgotten.

Y11
NO live interaction.
No Zoom / Teams etc
NO email support.
Nothing but worksheets online.
They are not marked in any way.

He has SN and SEN but no EHCp.
We could apply for a place in school as he is vulnerable but he is afraid to go due to bullying. And it is 'childcare' anyway.

He cannot understand the work. I cannot teach him GCSE physics & chemistry. His MH is being affected. I have emailed the School but no reply. Phoned but no reply (they have sent an email to say 'don't phone' to all parents: the answerphone was on whole of last ldown.

Should say DD is 6, year 2

Child is in school as I am a keyworker. No education, similar to holiday club. I don't care.

Year 3, 5 mins chat. Then set tasks.

Can you please explain fully why you feel this is not adequate? Stating the ages of your children would also be helpful when considering appropriate interaction. If your child/children are at state primary then perhaps you could also consider households where multiple family members require access to limited numbers of computers/phones.

In short. Get a grip.

I would be grateful. I'm having a break for ten minutes. Currently I am teaching live lessons to an almost full class of "keyworkers" and vulnerable children plus also managing at home learningbon google classroom which i have to manage in my 30 minute lunch break and all evening after school. As the local rate for covid is 1 in 43 in my area i'd imagine i'll get it soon anyway given the amount of people I mix with every day. So the parents like you can complain when i'm off ill as well.

For what it's worth Gavin Williamson said yesterday:

We have set out clear, legally binding requirements for schools to provide high-quality remote education. This is mandatory for ALL state-funded schools and will be enforced by Ofsted. We expect schools to provide between three and five teaching hours a day, depending on a child’s age.

If parents feel their child’s school is not providing suitable remote education they should first raise their concerns with the teacher or headteacher and failing that, report the matter to Ofsted.

www.gov.uk/government/speeches/education-secretary-statement-to-parliament-on-national-lockdown

Lots of people work infront of screens all day 🤷‍♀️

I would absolutely complain if i thought teaching wasn't up to par? Not like they will be paid proportionately less for providing 1 hour of teaching and a few worksheets compared to a normal full 6-8 hour day?

This is similar to how study can work in schools too. The teacher stands at the front of the class and presents the work, or a new way of doing something, then the children work on it while the teacher helps anyone who gets stuck. Teachers don't always stand at the front of the class actively 'teaching' all the way through the lesson, otherwise the children wouldn't have a chance to practice what they're being taught.

Primary
1 x live lesson per year group a day.
Work set on Google classroom every morning for the day.

Secondary
Full time live lessons from next Monday.

I’m happy with the minimal primary live lessons, my husband is usually on Teams calls all day and with my eldest doing a full timetable of live classes our internet wouldn’t survive with much more going on!

Two primary children here Y4 & Y6. They're getting Google meets twice a day with the teacher and whole class for registration and to set the timetable and work for the day. The afternoon one teacher reads to them too and discusses the book. They are also having occasional extra meets at the end of the day for another 15 mins to do a show and tell or similar. The rest of the work is on Google classroom but very well structured, they are told each half hour what they should be working on. Key worker kids are following the same timetable also on Google classroom but just in school to enable teachers to manage effectively.

I'm really impressed, it's a million miles away from the first lockdown where we were just given sheets to do within a week - not remotely enough if you were working too - and a teacher call once a fortnight in the summer term.

No live interaction here either (yr 5). Just links to Bitesize and Oak and worksheets. Am waiting until after the weekend to see if there is a dramatic change. I have been told (mostly on here), that this is different to last time because then the curriculum was suspended and schools weren't legally obliged to do anything at all (although many did because doing more than one is legally obliged to do can be a good thing), but that this time they will be delivering the full curriculum remotely. Except in our case they're not. They are however complaining about the number of KW children in, failing to see that the two are directly connected. Sort out remote learning properly, and more children (particularly KS2) can learn effectively from home.

I know many many schools are doing far better than this and if nothing changes after the weekend then parents won't be able to hold off any more, not whilst other schools are teaching children.

@ivfbeenbusy there are lots of kids at school- who do you suppose is teaching them?

@phlebasconsidered that sounds really tough. I hope things improve.

The thing that gavin Williamson said- 3-5 hours, can include links to online lessons that have been pre-recorded. It does not mean live teaching.

For those demanding more live teaching- presumably you have a device per child, and fast unlimited internet. If so, you're doing better than the majority of families.

If my kids had live lessons all day our (limited, expensive) internet data would run out within a week. I can afford to buy more data- plenty of people can't.

Secondary here, we are teaching our normal timetable, probably about 30min ‘live’ teaching in the hour and then written tasks which take about 30min throughout. For younger years about 10min of me teaching , 10min they do something, then 10 min me teaching etc...!

The key worker kids are on a computer doing the same whilst being supervised by an adult.