Schools - why are they doing this?

[Scrooge89]

Why are the media preparing us for school closures? They simply can’t do this to us…

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-59673271

Not to my children. My youngest struggled so much at home and was one of the 25% who couldn’t go to school (although I saw how much some people fudged the key worker card I may have to do it).

Where are all these screwed up by covid kids?

I can honestly say in that in our school of about 1200 I haven't encountered any.

Also for those worried about vulnerable and/or mentally ill children what do you do about this? Do you write to your MPs to complain about the dilapidated state of our social services and the shocking conditions children are left living in? Were you up in arms at the social workers who 'worked from home' during lockdowns because somehow safeguarding the countries most vulnerable children wasn't seen as key frontline work that couldn't be done from home? Are you campaigning for CAMHS which went past breaking point years ago? Do you campaign for social workers and counsellors and education psychologists to be placed in schools given schools are apparently the place to take care of all these issues now?

Or, honestly ask yourself, does your concern only seems to arise when there's a threat of your child not being able to go to school and you facing having to rearrange your life and work around that?

If there is genuinely this much concern about young people's wellbeing and education and safety how is that not being translated to pressure on the government to stop cutting and cutting the services that are meant to focus on these things? Why does there seem to be such silence about all these issues and just abuse and criticism thrown at the frontline professionals who spend their working lives tackling these issues despite massive underfunding and lack of all resources even outside of a pandemic?

It just feels like so much wasted energy and angst to be battering teachers rather than directing that energy at insisting on better funding and increased prioritising of these services by the state. The former achieves nothing except demoralising the very people trying to tackle these things on a daily basis the latter would actually make a difference.

@starlight13 shame on you for your silly post which is an awful thing to say when women are actually struggling with real abuse.

My experience is that children in y2 and 3 have suffered quite a bit. Many missed the transition from playing to independent learning including the very basics of phonics.

My own children who are younger and older than this are not that affected as the eldest was already an independent learner with the basics in place and the youngest was playing at nursery.

I feel the government need to prioritise money for these year groups.

I also realise this is my experience.

On the 40 children per class point my mother said children tended to do what they were told more in those days so she could control 40
Control isn't teaching. I can lead an assembly and control 150, however 25 to 30 is maximum for effective learning. But a number of posters don't seem that bothered about learning.
If your mother really was a great teacher she would be appalled at the disparaging remarks you make about the profession.

Yes - good point actually. I'm secondary so it's different obviously.

Presumably even kids from homes with low level neglect or lack of skilled parenting eg. not talking enough, not reading together, not modelling self regulation particularly consistently etc must lose a huge amount by not being at school in those early developmental windows.

I tend to assume we're talking about secondary because those are harder to keep open than primaries where there can be bubbling and controls on the amount of people in close contact with each other to a degree. Plus limited impact on public transport.

In secondary it seems the DfE thought let's just adopt the language of primary and pretend it translates to the secondary environment (ie. bubbles).

@TheHoneyBadger

Our mental health room is rammed with anxious kids who were fine before this

@TheHoneyBadger

Where are all these screwed up by covid kids?

I can honestly say in that in our school of about 1200 I haven't encountered any.

Also for those worried about vulnerable and/or mentally ill children what do you do about this? Do you write to your MPs to complain about the dilapidated state of our social services and the shocking conditions children are left living in? Were you up in arms at the social workers who 'worked from home' during lockdowns because somehow safeguarding the countries most vulnerable children wasn't seen as key frontline work that couldn't be done from home? Are you campaigning for CAMHS which went past breaking point years ago? Do you campaign for social workers and counsellors and education psychologists to be placed in schools given schools are apparently the place to take care of all these issues now?

Or, honestly ask yourself, does your concern only seems to arise when there's a threat of your child not being able to go to school and you facing having to rearrange your life and work around that?

If there is genuinely this much concern about young people's wellbeing and education and safety how is that not being translated to pressure on the government to stop cutting and cutting the services that are meant to focus on these things? Why does there seem to be such silence about all these issues and just abuse and criticism thrown at the frontline professionals who spend their working lives tackling these issues despite massive underfunding and lack of all resources even outside of a pandemic?

It just feels like so much wasted energy and angst to be battering teachers rather than directing that energy at insisting on better funding and increased prioritising of these services by the state. The former achieves nothing except demoralising the very people trying to tackle these things on a daily basis the latter would actually make a difference.

My eldest was never great with children his own age but lockdown has exacerbated his social awkwardness to an alarming degree and he’s now having intervention to try to help him make friends. He was coping before but being stuck at home with two perpetually distracted adults and younger siblings has left him struggling to fit in.

My younger girls are fine, though they’ve been able to attend more schooling as my youngest was at preschool and my middle one was in year 1 and was able to return for a half term in the summer of 2020.

And it’s not just a case of rearranging your life and work is it? It’s an impossibility for many of us who are two parent working households in demanding jobs. We had some sympathy in the first lockdown but that’s now gone and our employers expect us to be available and to perform.

I don’t have the answers but this dismissive hand waving of actual issues that parents have and trying to distill it down to “can’t be arsed” can fuck off.

I know it's not easy. Single working parent here with no involvement from the father and a demanding job myself.

This is where the us/them divide doesn't work because we're working parents too. Also very many of us didn't want to use kw places because we knew that it wasn't safe and that there was no 'teaching' going on per se just supervision and access to a computer to do the same online learning as the students at home but in a cold classroom and none of the fun of PE, raucous breaktimes etc and none of their close friends in.

I don't think I said people just couldn't be arsed did I? That is your reading of what I said in which that wasn't what I was saying.

Sorry your son is struggling btw Created

Some who are struggling are the ones who really don't thrive in school and are fairly miserable there for various reasons and who have therefore found it very difficult to go back after having escaped it for a while.

What is a mental health room Rainbow ? Are you primary?

@TheHoneyBadger

Yes - good point actually. I'm secondary so it's different obviously.

Presumably even kids from homes with low level neglect or lack of skilled parenting eg. not talking enough, not reading together, not modelling self regulation particularly consistently etc must lose a huge amount by not being at school in those early developmental windows.

I tend to assume we're talking about secondary because those are harder to keep open than primaries where there can be bubbling and controls on the amount of people in close contact with each other to a degree. Plus limited impact on public transport.

In secondary it seems the DfE thought let's just adopt the language of primary and pretend it translates to the secondary environment (ie. bubbles).

I agree about bubbles. Obviously the complications of siblings and before/after school club, shared toilets etc make it harder but it's clearly easier than secondary!

*Where are all these screwed up by covid kids?

I can honestly say in that in our school of about 1200 I haven't encountered any.*

Well that's great for your schoolchildren!

But unfortunately there are a lot of young people struggling with mental health issues caused by isolation during the past school and University lockdowns!

On a personal note if it's of any use to anyone else I let go of the idea of ds needing to do his school work synchronously or to do everything. As a parent all live lessons would be a nightmare for this household - those who did them recorded them thankfully.

There are weekends and evenings (thankfully as he quickly went semi nocturnal). You can also make executive decisions such as focusing on core subjects/areas and emailing the school to let them know you won't be doing x, y or z because you can't cope with all of that and are prioritising a, b and c. I did this for sure.

It doesn't have to be done full on from 9-4 or whatever. You can sit down and look at what's there, decide what they can do independently and say right I'm expecting you to get English, History and Business Studies done by 12 and then you can do what you want BUT we'll have to sit down and do Maths this evening after dinner together (if eg Maths is problematic for them) and you can decide fuck it that lesson from eg. D&T looks stupidly complicated and pointless so we'll write that off.

Some would disagree with me but that's the kind of thing I had to do to deal with being a single parent in a demanding job and having a seriously unmotivated son who is definitely not a self starter school work wise.

Re-arranging is my point as I said. Of course it's a nightmare for all of us and we have to do the best we can in our own circumstances as a parent. As a teacher I had my laptop on all of the time and would answer email questions as they came through at 9pm at night and be recording lessons at 6am when the house was quiet and I'd be uninterrupted. The whole 9-5 thing went out the window and clearly not all of my students were working to those hours either if I'm getting emails and queries in the late evening.

Also bear in mind that an hours lesson at my school includes movement time, getting sat down and settled and books given out and equipment unpacked, packing away time, a bit of chatter and discussion etc. For my remote lessons I aimed at about 20 minutes of recorded teacher input and video clips etc and 25minutes -however long the really diligent ones wanted to spend on it worth of independent tasks. My lessons were all recorded and then I'd sit in a google meet room at the synchronous time of that lesson in case anyone from that class wanted to ask me anything or just have a chat by joining the meet.

Hopefully we don't go down this road again and we turn out to be able to manage to keep things open (my GP is already closed to all but emergencies and vaccines though) but if not it will be ok. Try not to doom and gloom yourself into a self fulfilling nightmare and rejig things to work for you and your household and feel free to make executive decisions about priorities. Eg. If your child is not taking drama/Geography/whatever next year due to options and there isn't time to do everything then only do the subjects they'll be taking. Or if your child is great at reading and capital letters and full stops already, or whatever the focus is from school, feel free to do some reading and verbal comprehension questioning together in bed that night instead of the literacy lesson.

Sorry if this is all completely unhelpful.

The issue of schools opening isn’t just to do with number of teachers, it’s also all the other staff needed to keep a school open safely - the first aiders, safeguarding team, SEN team, dinner staff, premises staff, office staff… schools aren’t just about teaching anymore, they are also responsible for providing a whole range of other support.

I will hate for schools to close, homeschooling my own kids while trying to wfh was absolutely awful. But complaining about teachers is not going to help and will just make things worse. We are in this situation because of schools running on minimal staffing with no slack in the system, at the same time being given more and more issues outside of teaching to take responsibility for.

So many times on MN a parent posts about having issues with their child / family and the response often is ‘have you asked the school for help?’. Schools are now the default catch-all for any problems but not given the staffing to manage this.

I agree about bubbles. Obviously the complications of siblings and before/after school club, shared toilets etc make it harder but it's clearly easier than secondary

Pros and cons from what I gather. We had the madness of 'zones' which meant us running around from one end of the school to the other with all our resources like blue arsed flies whilst the kids (year 8 in particular) were left unsupervised between lessons re-enacting the Lord of the Flies. On the other hand I've heard of primary colleagues having to serve lunch to their class in their classroom and have to eat in there with them and basically not getting more than ten minutes to themselves all day long which would have killed me.

On the plus side I now know so many more of my colleagues because we'd all be passing each other as we darted about and you could be teaching with a science lesson on one side of you and a design lesson on the other and when the final bell rang you would gather at a distance in the corridor to commiserate on the madness and try to cheer up those who were struggling that day.

And it’s not just a case of rearranging your life and work is it? It’s an impossibility for many of us who are two parent working households in demanding jobs. We had some sympathy in the first lockdown but that’s now gone and our employers expect us to be available and to perform. I don’t have the answers but this dismissive hand waving of actual issues that parents have and trying to distill it down to “can’t be arsed” can fuck off

Try being a single parent household with a demanding job. As a teacher, my Head expects me to perform. Teachers are also parents and facing the same issues as the parents of the children they teach. This fact is persistently ignored when discussing the potential issues associated with school closures and possible lockdowns. When you write like this you seem to be suggesting that it is the teacher’s responsibility to take your children off your hands so you can do your demanding job, regardless of the school’s circumstances. We have even had suggestions here that covid-positive teachers should be in work, a persistent threat of reducing our wages/sacking us if we don’t take your children (and we will have no choice in any of this, we will simply do as the Government demands), or vague threats around rearranging the school year so we get no holidays whatsoever. The persistent ‘you don’t give a shit about vulnerable children’ is particularly galling when it’s us who have put our hands in our pockets for years buying breakfasts, washing clothes, and providing safe spaces before and after school, often at the expense of spending time with our own children. Those same children prior to the pandemic were continually ignored on mumsnet, at best, or labelled trouble makers who were stopping your children from getting the education they deserve fact with suggestions they should be removed (and thus denied their education) as a result. Our professionalism and commitment is questioned when we suggest closures might be necessary, even if just at a local level, and one want thought is given to those of us who have worked throughout with CV and CEV people in our households and the risk we have posed to them - in my case, a CEV 12 year old.

Whenever any teacher starts a thread about trying to make schools safer - precisely because we knew this was coming and we don’t want schools closed - there is tumbleweed rolling through. Parents en masse do not value education, only childcare. If you want us to do our best for you, perhaps add your weight to our voices which have not been heard for the duration of the pandemic? Would it be hard to listen and support rather than think at an individual level only and make demands that satisfy your situation but are not necessarily the best for all children, collectively?

@Blubells

*Where are all these screwed up by covid kids?

I can honestly say in that in our school of about 1200 I haven't encountered any.*

Well that's great for your schoolchildren!

But unfortunately there are a lot of young people struggling with mental health issues caused by isolation during the past school and University lockdowns!

I repeat: "Do you write to your MPs to complain about the dilapidated state of our social services and the shocking conditions children are left living in? Were you up in arms at the social workers who 'worked from home' during lockdowns because somehow safeguarding the countries most vulnerable children wasn't seen as key frontline work that couldn't be done from home? Are you campaigning for CAMHS which went past breaking point years ago? Do you campaign for social workers and counsellors and education psychologists to be placed in schools given schools are apparently the place to take care of all these issues now?"

@Whichjab

Do you not see the problem if covid overwhelms the nhs? I read people saying it doesn't matter as kids don't get sick from it, I'm healthy etc. It's not getting covid you need to be scared about. It's having no ambulance when you are in a car crash, no doctor to check your child, no midwife to deliver the baby, no anesthetist, no surgeon, no beds. No cancer care, no cancer referrals, no chance to be given stroke medicine in the golden hour. That's nothing to say of the no police, supermarket workers, bank staff etc that could all be off work at once. Lockdown isn't to stop people getting it, it's to stop everyone getting it at the same time.

Absolutely this.

@TheHoneyBadger

Nope, large secondary. We have a huge mental health room, 3 full time workers in there, school nurse once a week and school counsellor once a week. It’s where kids go when they can’t go to lessons.. it probably has about 40 visits a day and then they overspill to the behaviour isolation room…

Do you campaign for social workers and counsellors and education psychologists to be placed in schools given schools are apparently the place to take care of all these issues now?"

I don't actually feel that schools should take more care of these issues.

I think (our) schools are doing a wonderful job.

But when schools and Unis were completely closed that's when my teens were struggling mentally - the isolation and lack of face to face contacts, the cancelled exams etc.

So I hope schools don't close for any extended periods again.

@Sowhatifiam

And it’s not just a case of rearranging your life and work is it? It’s an impossibility for many of us who are two parent working households in demanding jobs. We had some sympathy in the first lockdown but that’s now gone and our employers expect us to be available and to perform. I don’t have the answers but this dismissive hand waving of actual issues that parents have and trying to distill it down to “can’t be arsed” can fuck off

Try being a single parent household with a demanding job. As a teacher, my Head expects me to perform. Teachers are also parents and facing the same issues as the parents of the children they teach. This fact is persistently ignored when discussing the potential issues associated with school closures and possible lockdowns. When you write like this you seem to be suggesting that it is the teacher’s responsibility to take your children off your hands so you can do your demanding job, regardless of the school’s circumstances. We have even had suggestions here that covid-positive teachers should be in work, a persistent threat of reducing our wages/sacking us if we don’t take your children (and we will have no choice in any of this, we will simply do as the Government demands), or vague threats around rearranging the school year so we get no holidays whatsoever. The persistent ‘you don’t give a shit about vulnerable children’ is particularly galling when it’s us who have put our hands in our pockets for years buying breakfasts, washing clothes, and providing safe spaces before and after school, often at the expense of spending time with our own children. Those same children prior to the pandemic were continually ignored on mumsnet, at best, or labelled trouble makers who were stopping your children from getting the education they deserve fact with suggestions they should be removed (and thus denied their education) as a result. Our professionalism and commitment is questioned when we suggest closures might be necessary, even if just at a local level, and one want thought is given to those of us who have worked throughout with CV and CEV people in our households and the risk we have posed to them - in my case, a CEV 12 year old.

Whenever any teacher starts a thread about trying to make schools safer - precisely because we knew this was coming and we don’t want schools closed - there is tumbleweed rolling through. Parents en masse do not value education, only childcare. If you want us to do our best for you, perhaps add your weight to our voices which have not been heard for the duration of the pandemic? Would it be hard to listen and support rather than think at an individual level only and make demands that satisfy your situation but are not necessarily the best for all children, collectively?

As a teacher you were a key worker and had a place for your children at school, though obviously single parents had it much harder than dual parent households. If you didn’t take that place then that’s on you and is your decision.

School does not exist for me to dump my kids with them, it’s there to educate them. When that is removed and there is no other option for parents but to have them at home then somewhere along the line something has to give. If the schools refuse to take them for whatever reason and our employers insist on us working and we’ve run out of money because of the last two lockdowns affecting our finances due to missed work then the one who suffers is the family, usually the mother.

I have huge sympathy for teachers, my sister is a head and my mother was a teacher but in the absence of support for parents in this situation there’s little wonder that we desperately want the schools to stay open.

No amount of timetabling or near 24 hour working is going to help. I’ve got 3 primary aged children who cannot be ignored for 8 hours a day while I work. It’s unsafe and it’s unsustainable and the school insist on having them for live lessons at odd hours at the same time as I’m in meetings.

As a teacher you were a key worker and had a place for your children at school

Not for secondary. Why do you think primaries were packed and secondaries weren't?

All the children in my kids year who have been off “with covid” have actually been off with a positive test. Not one has been sick. Worst symptom appears to be a headache.

@TheHoneyBadger

I agree about bubbles. Obviously the complications of siblings and before/after school club, shared toilets etc make it harder but it's clearly easier than secondary

Pros and cons from what I gather. We had the madness of 'zones' which meant us running around from one end of the school to the other with all our resources like blue arsed flies whilst the kids (year 8 in particular) were left unsupervised between lessons re-enacting the Lord of the Flies. On the other hand I've heard of primary colleagues having to serve lunch to their class in their classroom and have to eat in there with them and basically not getting more than ten minutes to themselves all day long which would have killed me.

On the plus side I now know so many more of my colleagues because we'd all be passing each other as we darted about and you could be teaching with a science lesson on one side of you and a design lesson on the other and when the final bell rang you would gather at a distance in the corridor to commiserate on the madness and try to cheer up those who were struggling that day.

That's so interesting. As our staff room was closed and we had to supervise lunch we had no time away from the kids. That was hard. In addition I found I knew less staff and any new staff I had no idea about as we literally never emerged from our 'bubble!'

and the school insist on having them for live lessons at odd hours at the same time as I’m in meetings.

Just to pick up on this point, as it once again highlights how schools just can't please everyone. Your children had live lessons which didn't work for your family. Where as others on the thread have said they didn't have live lessons, and wished the school would have provided them.

@noblegiraffe

My kids nursery/primary saw secondary teachers as key workers