How (if at all) has your views towards primary education/school changed?

[LucyLastik]

Full disclosure: I am a primary school teacher but I am interested to hear if your views have changed about primary education since the lockdown,

I have a Dd whose GCSEs were cancelled, a DS in year 7 and aDD in year 5 and my feelings towards their education has changed somewhat.

I'm interested to hear different thoughts.

I don't know about changed but I can see that throughout lockdown my children's teachers' workload must have at least doubled.

I have the utmost admiration for the HT and staff.

How do you mean your feelings towards their education have changed? You must be worried?

I think from a primary point of view, we could perhaps have done more. We have worked extremely hard to provide what we have but I think we could have stepped up the online provision.

My DD1 has been largely dropped by her school despite the fact she is going back to do A levels at sixth form in the same school.

DS school has only just started online live lessons but the provision is vague and a bit meh.

DD2 attends the school I work at, so again I think more could have been done.

I had my epithany last year as my son didnt have a school place whilst we waited for a special school to come up. Basically school is a cheap way to cater for the masses but at an individual level its really inefficient and limiting. So if a child is really in the zone with english and its assembly then break time the english gets put away and the moment passes. If a child wants to invesitgate a science thing at a tangent, theres no time to go iff at a tangent. If they find the mayans dull they cant do japan instead.
But oddly we dont fund or value the bits that are hard to recreate. Take playtime when children could really focus on social skills - thus is squeezed and often run by the least qualified people.

I feel sad that no-one from school has personally contacted my autistic son. It's a small school so possible. I feel he's been forgotten. Although the school has provided pre-recorded online lessons that have been helpful. I'm confused that before lockdown even one days absence was met with utter disapproval but now 6 months is acceptable. I won't worry about taking holidays in term time anymore. Whilst I would never blame the teachers, I am utterly disappointed that education is the last priority of the Gov. Surely children are better off at school that queuing for McDonalds or shopping in Primark?

And don't get me started on those poor children living in abusive homes. School is often their only safe place. They have been thrown to the wolves.

Ex secondary teacher here.

Even though I thought I was very aware of the amount of time lost to movement / transition between activities / dealing with kids dicking about etc etc I've been quite shocked at how little time my year 1 DD needs to get through any work set. Her actual time spent doing work at school must be so thinly spread throughout the day. Academically, she's accomplished far more at home with me in the past weeks.

Also agree with the pp about holidays. I always have been fine with term time holidays unless in an exam year, but the utter hypocrisy of 'every school day counts' Vs 'cancel school for months, here's some worksheets' is shocking.

I'm sorry that you have experienced negative things with your schools.

I'm finding that I am calling my class parents but they don't particularly want to speak to me. I'm torn between calling because I want to check in with my class (and I miss them!) and not putting pressure on parents by calling when they don't really want me to.

I always knew what they learned at infant school wasn't particularly hard but the skills of the teacher were what kept the children interested. School definitely caters to the masses but I think they get institutionalised really quickly. My Y2 is not interested in home learning and won't engage properly with anything we try to do. If her teacher could have managed a 10 minute video a day I think it would have made a huge difference, they've done 1 a week but it's not enough.

I appreciate teachers have been working hard and I assume this wasn't possible but if I look at it purely from dd's perspective she would have benefitted.

My YR is working really hard!

These are interesting points, thank you for sharing.

It's been interesting for me as I can see clearly now that Y2 DD has ADHD, something her teachers (fab though they've all been) have not wanted to discuss. She simply can't learn much in this situation. Still, at least it's given me a kick up the bum to get her assessed. DH has done a lot of the online shouting aka learning with her. I feel he finally understands what I've suffered with her homework these last few years! She actually seems pretty happy with being able to go in the garden and snack all the time but she's going a bit feral. Meanwhile I'm teaching my sixth formers on Teams and she keeps interrupting. Arrgh!

I only have a primary and preschool age child, but it made me even more certain that young children really don’t need a great deal of academic teaching as early as we do it. It’s really made me see the value in having a decent amount of time to have free play and create and make things.

It’s made me realise that the social aspect of school is important for my children.

I’m hoping it’ll show that some of the tests we do for young children are really not needed..

Only other thing I would say (and I really don’t want it to sound rude) but I didn’t realise there was so many resources online. Before I had thought I would never be able to homeschool, having seen all the resources available I do think I’d be able to home school in primary if I wanted to (which I don’t).

Teacher and parent, and it’s improved my attitude I think. I feel very proud of what my school has done for its students and my DD who doesn’t attend my school appears to have been supported appropriately too.
I quite enjoy teaching at the moment with smaller class sizes and without the worry of observations! It makes you wonder how necessary some things in the ‘old’ world really were.

It also makes me appreciate our profession! Supporting a child through a worksheet is fine for a short period of time but truly teaching is a skill in itself.

I don't know about changed but I can see that throughout lockdown my children's teachers' workload must have at least doubled.

That's interesting, because I can't see how our teachers could possibly be doing more now than there do when the children were in school. I was happy with our school before, but the online provision is so poor and there's been no contact from the school, despite dd1 not logging on for over a month. They have massively gone down in my estimation.

I think the government, local authorities and academy chains were remiss in not developing capacity and work programmes for medium-long term schooling from home earlier (and are still not doing now). There is such disparity in the level of education at home, some of which is driven by school support (there are other factors) and it would have been great to have seen an effort to bring to whether a high quality work scheme which could be widely delivered rather than hodge lodge initiatives in individual schools.

By that's interesting I meant the difference in schools, not that I doubted your teachers were doing so much, just to be clear. I've seen loads of people say how good their schools are.
If this continues I really think the provision each school gives should be assessed, although that's a huge job so not realistic really.

A real mixed bag from my DC's school. Yr R have been fantastic & dd2 loved homeschool when I was furloughed, they were amazingly flexible, supportive & genuinely seemed interested in what kids were upto/learning/reading even if it wasn't what they'd set.
I've always known she would be an ideal candidate for proper home-schooling though if I won the lottery - combination of hearing loss & personality.

Yr4 I've been incredibly disappointed with. They've ticked their box in terms of "providing work" but no feedback, no interaction & very limited imagination beyond load worksheet onto google classroom. Dd1's face lit up the day she actually got feedback from one of the teachers.
One teacher tried to interact a bit more & add some more interesting topics but she's a trainee & has been reassigned now to a bubble in school.
The other one is repeating worksheets already uploaded, not putting stuff on at all & not even answering messages now.

I've been incredibly impressed at how structured & organised they've been with the return to school & communication has been good from the head.

Wow, some really mixed opinions then. As an NQT I was glad to find worksheets. I'm a bit further down the line now, so not so much these days.

I think it's shown how badly coordinated school is now. There's all this top down government diktat and lots of multi academy trusts but what this needed was real coordination across LEA or government. LEAs are so hollowed our they couldn't help and government is happy to pass the buck. The inefficiency and inadequacy of every school in the country starting from scratch and trying to understand and set up online homeschooling has been bonkers and so wasteful.

And I'd just like to see Gavin Williamson go in to 10 different schools and help them work out how to open up fully in line with the guidance. It would make a hilarious documentary. I'd love to hear his solutions to schools which were struggling for space and short of teachers suddenly finding double the classrooms and a whole new teaching staff. As well as the money for clean down etc. He must be a wizard if he thinks it's feasible.

And I'm not a teacher by the way just a very frustrated parent.

I am not a teacher and don't have any children or grandchildren in primary school but one thing has been bugging me: isn't year 6 all about SATS? Is it really a loss to children not to have these?

I value what teachers can deliver in school even more & am frustrated that Government policies have effectively cut some children adrift from education (for a minimum period of 6months). A lot of peoples opinions will be based on how much support the school have delivered at distance & that experience is incredibly varied - look at the thread Aibu to ask if your school have phoned you during lockdown? Feel very sorry for the teachers who are going to have to try to re-engage children and hope that children who have managed to learn remotely will be challenged when they return, not waiting for the catch up to happen. Just feel disappointment that my yr3 hasn’t even got a keeping in touch day scheduled. Our school broadcasting photos of the returning years happily engaging in activities with classmates seems a bit crass!

I feel the same as the PP. Nursery, R, Y1 and 6 are now getting a Rolls-Royce service in comparison with those of us stuck with the home shouting. It's not the school's fault but I am beyond irritated to be paying for a school that the govt guidance is preventing my child from accessing!

For the little ones (reception to year 2)- that work that takes most of the day at school takes only 1 to 1.5 hours at home (the school sets us work in all subjects daily). My child is delighted he can play as much as he can now after doing the work at his own pace. For me it showed once again that early start of school is not that beneficial, and I would rather prefer starting school at 6 as in many other countries. I have a calmer, relaxed child at home who is not stressed by being in a noisy environment for most of the day.
For the older children- complete lack of national coordination of the school curriculum. Some countries do lessons on TV channels, or directing children and parents to the textbook, which is only posdible when everyone broadly follows the same curriculum, like French schools.
And that private school students do have one additional advantage - most private schools in the area teach full time lessons online, so are progressing pretty much as usual in their work.

Private schools are also far more likely (in my experience as a teacher in both sectors) to teach from textbooks. It would have been possible for kids in private to take home a textbook from each subject and then the teachers could base online lessons around those. In state schools textbooks became unfashionable, in part due to the cost of keeping them up to date / replacing lost and damaged stock, in (larger) part due to Ofsted not liking them (not enough differentiation and accounting for individual learning styles) plus even where they did still exist they were 1 between 2 anyway.

A unified curriculum (one exam board only) and physical textbooks would have made such a huge difference for secondary school students during this.