Teachers, What percent of your class are doing the home learning?

[RosieLemonade]

And are you worried it will peter out to nothing? I teach in a very poor area. A lot of my class have laptops provided by the school which is helpful. But the engagement is low. Some days are better than others. Zoom lessons have about 75% but then hardly any hand in the work. What is it like at your school?

This has made me cry and cry. Parent to Yr5 child. Very bright, likes school. I'm WFH, DH is partly WFH and partly out of home. I manage to spend an hour and a bit with her each day. She just quietly weeps while trying to engage with maths and now same with English. Lovely teacher dropped round some maths worksheets for her which did help - she was getting very overwhelmed with it online. She is very unhappy and falling behind. I am working 6am-midnight to keep up. It's a nightmare.

Ds's state secondary says they have an average 97% attendance for at least one live lesson a day and 78% for all 5 lessons so could be better but nowhere near as bad as in the first lockdown

Our school wouldn't be able to answer this.

Is my child's school the only school where there is no daily registration, no mechanism to return work, no online classroom platform, no telephone number or teacher email address, no marking, no feedback and no oversight?

Parents receive a daily email with the day's work. It contains links to pre-recorded videos and worksheets. The children can write comments under the videos if they want. Twice a week the entire class shares a short zoom call where each child gets less than a minute to talk. The teacher asks each child to hold up to the camera a piece of work they've done, but obviously it can't be seen or marked.
That's it.
No child's work will be seen until they return to school after Easter, or whenever.

If we as parents want to talk to or email the teacher we have to do it via a message to the school secretary which she passes on.

This is year six.

This is unusual isn't it?

Regularly 85%

We have done all we can to engage and encourage.
We hope some are watching and enjoying the BBC provision but you can only do your best.

Parents POV, daily register at 9 and apart from two days 100% attendance, pretty deprived area but school sorted laptops last term in preparation. Maths is 9-10 with lessons taken by the class teacher in class with around 6-7 children in class each day. Children are asked and offer answers etc as they would in school, half an hour work til 10.30 then English 11-12 , work set til 12.30 then lunch. Topic and phonics in the Pm from 1.30to 2.30 then home work to 3. There are also whole school assemblies with the head twice a week so I don't think they are missing out apart from the social aspect at all. Year one. But the rest of the school is the same. There's 800 pupils so not an easy task to organise but it's been fantastic

parent perspective: one child will do all the work set and revision if non set.

one is in school because, well lets say we achieved 50% of work set. attempting to get them to follow school work resulted in meltdown, and not actually learning anything. (observation as teacher nothing was going in) I spent a lot of time trying to get them engaged with any learning of any sort and emailing school to update them on anything they had attemtped. so much better now they are in school due to sen

My friends DC are at private school year 7 and they have 100% doing the work.

We are doing everything.

But as a previous home educator, a lot of the work is not at all sensible for working from home on your own.

I'm debating deregistering again to escape the 'class work at home' as it is pretty dull. I feel sorry for teachers as they are out of their comfort zone and the rigidity of the curriculum is making it harder.

I do worry we will.have a lot of kids switched off. But then plenty were switched off by school in normal times

Virtually 100% in my 8yo DCs class. Those remote learning have a live morning welcome and afternoon reflection time (optional but most are most days) and then 2-3 hours on work set on teams which they can do largely independently. Their school academy chain has provided iPads and one teacher is always providing live support to help children who don’t understand (of the other three year group teachers, two are with key workers, and one is planning and recording work for the next week). The work set is interesting, realistic and can largely be done independently.

@ViveLaCrepe no that is similar to what DS school is doing.

I have already informed the school that past half term, I am not forcing DS to do it anymore. DP has already taken on some of the homeschooling after he has finished work, in the hope a different person might make a difference

Parent’s perspective here. Work set (worksheets with a few videos and no line online classes) equates to 5 hours per day (according to teachers estimates against tasks). The work is based on son’s chronological age with no differentiation of workload and I’m told he’s two years delayed in learning. We do 50% of the work set and it takes most of the day as support has to be given by me to read, write, understand. Some days I deliberately ignore set work to focus on phonics, reading practice, basic numeracy. I’ve told the teacher this but a review of work completed/uploaded by the school wouldn’t reflect the huge amount we are doing at home.

@ViveLaCrepe

Our school wouldn't be able to answer this.

Is my child's school the only school where there is no daily registration, no mechanism to return work, no online classroom platform, no telephone number or teacher email address, no marking, no feedback and no oversight?

Parents receive a daily email with the day's work. It contains links to pre-recorded videos and worksheets. The children can write comments under the videos if they want. Twice a week the entire class shares a short zoom call where each child gets less than a minute to talk. The teacher asks each child to hold up to the camera a piece of work they've done, but obviously it can't be seen or marked.
That's it.
No child's work will be seen until they return to school after Easter, or whenever.

If we as parents want to talk to or email the teacher we have to do it via a message to the school secretary which she passes on.

This is year six.

This is unusual isn't it?

That’s bloody awful, isn’t everybody going mad?

Y2 teacher - about 50% attendance at live lessons, around 90% completing at least 50% of their work. Probably about 5% completing everything set. I’m happy with that, most are at least having a go. I think we should do fewer live sessions though.

@Chaotic45

This thread makes me feel incredibly guilty that I'm working full time out of the home and so my son has to do everything with no parental support.

Me too

No one should feel guilty for having to work.

Sad maybe but guilt is for where you have made a selfish choice. The decision to have a job that requires you to work out of the home was presumably made when life was normal!

@SionnachRua

100%. Affluent area. I find that it's easier to get them to do the work in live Zoom lessons than via Seesaw etc - and correcting with Seesaw is a ballache so just sticking to live works for me.

We use Seesaw...I find it simple to use and very effective at engaging the children. We have 100% engagement with it (year 2 class...3-form intake in our school). We've used it for years though, so our families are used to it.

Do you have the paid version, or free? The paid version is very versatile, with so many more features and options.

Our 'lives' on Teams are less well attended though...our parents have said they prefer the pre-recorded videos (loom/PowerPoint) that we put on seesaw, as they can access these at a time that works better for them. Still have a 'hard core' of attendees on Teams though...usually around 20 children each session (out of the 35 not in school). We've got around 2/3 of our cohort in school 🤷‍♀️

I have a third of my class in school. I only have one child who has not been on any zooms or handed in any work so it's a pretty high level of engagement. I don't know if this will continue but it has been consistent so far. I think we will have even more in now they are heavily suggesting schools won't be open till Easter. My bubble is 50% of my year group.

Parent perspective

Dd is in yr8. Her secondary was the only secondary last time offering full lessons in all subjects. She engaged fully last time and is this time albeit more reluctantly than when in Yr7. I have had to make her engage in one or two lessons. She has a brilliant work ethic, which is part of her personality and a readily available mum to help her. Many children don’t have the former or the latter sadly. And some don’t even speak fluent English. Terribly hard.

The school is offering live lessons this time. A lot for science and at least once a week for most subjects, even if it is a 15 min chat before going off and doing the work. This has made a massive difference to DD’s interest. An outstanding large state secondary btw.

Dd told me about 17 appeared in form in the beginning out of 30. Idk about now. I know that a child, who refused to to engage at all is now at school. The staff are incredible and I am aware dd is so lucky to be at this school. Anecdotally some of her friends are doing almost all of it, one hardly any but is being assessed for ADHD / dyslexia and one is centring on core subjects.

I’m finding dd needs far less help this time around. This is both age related and because she is used to working remotely. In yr7, it was overwhelming for her and her English was far too difficult. I would say pitched at least at yr9 or top set yr8. GCSE level questions given with no explanation. Then dd was given algebra 2 weeks before the end of term. We were overwhelmed and exhausted. I got dd a tutor, who works on both subjects to tackle this. She also had the odd recorded lesson, none live last time. I can really understand why you teachers are struggling and thank you all for your efforts.

Ks2 teacher. One child not engaging at all - has SEN and been offered place at school but parents don't want to take it. One child attending zoom, but very little work on Google Classroom- sending work packs home once a week which they have started doing. About 10 children have done everything. Everyone else doing most activities.

Parent perspective

We have no live lessons, everything on seesaw with prerecorded videos and links to websites etc. Which to be honest I prefer as it gives us flexibility as to when we do which task.

Dd is in Y4 and we complete 100% of the work DH is working full time out of the home, I work PT and am furloughed the rest. DM does homeschooling on days I work.

DM and I upload tasks to Seesaw as and when completed and teachers are fab and send feedback on every item uploaded. We have 1 teams meeting each week for a check in, show and tell sort of thing.

One thing I will say about the work is that stand alone work is easier then a long drawn out theme project where there are lessons every day on the same book for example, because if you miss one (because trying to WFH, kids are having a bad day, younger children being disruptive) it is really hard to then catch up and you end up not bothering with the whole topic. I am talking about primary kids who need help, I understand secondary have set texts etc. School have to understand that for so many families, it isn’t just a stay at home parent with a peaceful environment able to go through everything in core hours. For us, the stand alone pieces are more attractive as we can pick them up there and then and get them done without realising we have missed x y and z so not bothering at all!

@ViveLaCrepe

Our school wouldn't be able to answer this.

Is my child's school the only school where there is no daily registration, no mechanism to return work, no online classroom platform, no telephone number or teacher email address, no marking, no feedback and no oversight?

Parents receive a daily email with the day's work. It contains links to pre-recorded videos and worksheets. The children can write comments under the videos if they want. Twice a week the entire class shares a short zoom call where each child gets less than a minute to talk. The teacher asks each child to hold up to the camera a piece of work they've done, but obviously it can't be seen or marked.
That's it.
No child's work will be seen until they return to school after Easter, or whenever.

If we as parents want to talk to or email the teacher we have to do it via a message to the school secretary which she passes on.

This is year six.

This is unusual isn't it?

This is not acceptable! As a teacher, I'm appalled by this...and if I were you I would definitely complain. Your child deserves better. Get on the phone and ask them how they plan on ensuring a) progress is made, and b) minimum gaps in education!

I am so angry in your behalf...but even more for your child (and all the children experiencing this actually!). My class are receiving a full curriculum, 3x daily Teams lessons, all work is properly marked and sent back within 24 hours (including written feedback and recorded voice notes) and a weekly '10 minutes with your teacher' 1:1 if they want it on zoom.

I hope you get something sorted...please don't let them get away with this! Xx

In our school it varies by year group from 75% overall submission in year 7 on a sliding scale down to 50% in year 11, but this very much reflects the attitude to learning of those year groups when they’re in school. As a form tutor I contact my students weekly via email or phone and this has kept up the submission rate.

I would expect a lower participation rate in primary as parents need to help with the work.

Parent perspective here! My ds went into KS2 in september. We felt very unsupported in the last academic year (KS1) there was no school engagement and just links on the schools website to learning resources (oak academy, bite size, twinkle etc)
New school since september. No live lessons but work shared in google drive each day. This is mostly video lessons and worksheets. The three class teachers have split the subjects between them and it seems to be working well. We have a direct email to DS's teacher and she calls once a week. We are managing most of the lessons but finding our motivation is starting to lag a little.
I cannot fault the school, they've been great and loaned us a laptop as we only have 1 in the house which I need for work (SE WFH). I'm not worried about the lack of live lessons, I know my DS would be a PITA and want to show off. The staff do give a daily time table but they are flexible on this. We don't have to hand all work in, some pieces are requested and everything submitted receives feedback.

Parent perspective year 5

Similar to pp...No live lessons (2x 15 minute live registration per day) no work handed in so no feedback given. Answers to maths/english work are provided and I have to mark it myself. Some video links provided to oak academy but the task is literally just watch a 15 minute video. No tasks to go with it to in bed the learning.

It's not great! 50% of class are in as "key workers"

I'd say my child is doing 80% of the work and he's one of the more advanced ones in the class.