Virus will further highlight the education gap between middle class, private schools & others....

[321mamma]

Just putting my thoughts down z hmmhere.. Very concerned as like the rest of the UK my dc have been off since march & the work sent from school was acceptable not very much but it was corrected & teachers always replied to queries. Local private school had full day zoom classes for all children.
Roll onto September & there is a no homework policy in place in the school to help children resettle after the lockdown & a softly softly approach with revision of what was missed in the previous term. However friends in the private sector have said their kids recieved homework on day 1 & are straight on ahead with new concepts & topics...
Surely in the years ahead the private school kids are going to be hugely advantaged especially if govt need to do these "circuit breaks"?
I've been setting my own kids a little bit every day after school in Maths & English... Also listening to all 3 reading aloud daily but dds friend y4 in private 3 doors up from us is getting 2 hours homework daily I'm concerned

The difference will be enormous.
Our prep provided a full online curriculum that my SENDs 7 year old could access independently.
Local state school varied between nothing and worksheets needing massive parental involvement.
other local preps mostly provided pre-recorded lessons that require some parental supervision but not much (pre-recorded isn’t that engaging).
So in the absence of engaged parents that were either on furlough or SAHP, there was a clear advantage for the prep children. But even with very engaged parents, it would have been hard to mirror the most engaged preps, so there would still be a difference.

There will be a huge gap but it’s not just state vs private.
We are state but I was furloughed. So had no money worries at the time (unlike self employed who had no income and couldn’t claim the grants).
We were solvent enough (with donation from MIL and SIL) to be able to buy the year 7 and year 8 a cheap laptop each to do thier work on while the year 4 used the existing PC. (Lots of people weren’t able to provide devices so either kids had to share existing one or just do without)
We have decent fast broadband that is able to cope with 5 people streaming/using internet/using WiFi for various devices without too much interruption. Some people have rubbish internet - like my friend who lives very rural and has rubbish internet, or some people who only have internet on phone so is limited/expensive
I’m intelligent enough to be able to help explain things to the kids (or google it and make some sense of it) there are some people who have learning difficulties or are just not academic that won’t have been able to provide that sort of help to their kids.
We as parents quite highly value reading and education so pushed the kids to complete their school work, there will be some families where education is not thought of as important so the parents will not have bothered to make sure it was done.
I was home and due to who furloughed had no immediate money worries. There will have been people during lockdown who were working all the hours they could, or worrying so much about money they were sucidical. There will have been nurses and doctors working all hours in ICU, exhausted and worrying about passing the virus to thier loved ones. The keyworker places near us were just childcare, they weren’t having help with their school work so that still needed to be done at home at some point.
We have a huge selection of board games, books, craft materials, toys etc so could keep the kids occupied. There are plenty of families (even well off) where I haven’t even seen evidence of any books.
We live in a village and have a garden. Were able to go for nice country walks and sit in the garden etc. Lots of people were coupes up in flats or living in city centres where it was too crowded to go out.

But yes there will be others who go to private school who had a teacher on FaceTime all day teaching to a higher standard than I can achieve, but a lot of these variations are there in normal times so all you can do is try and do what you can for your own kids and if you feel they are lacking in something try to make up for it.

But saying that I did feel both out state primary and state secondary provided a good variation of work and activities and the teachers were responsive on various programmes.

@ohnothisagain I think this is why universities are more and more engaged in providing contextual offers - looking at a child’s place of education not just their grades. Private schools are businesses and must try and provide a service that goes beyond state as otherwise they have no USP (of course not all do but that is a different thread) The admission system for tertiary education now recognises this and can provide offers up to 2 grades lower to children from state schools in deprived areas and one grade for less deprived areas- we will only see more and more of this levelling up. Unis want the brightest kids for relevant courses and the only way to properly compare this is looking at the context of their education. EG a B at a level from Eton is dreadful, a B from a failing comp is miraculous. Which is great news in some ways but of course middle class parents who use state schools tutor their children and they are therefore at a big advantage against their less well off peers and increasingly their privately educated peers. It is all such a mess I don’t know what the answer is. I suspect three months of imperfect learning is probably not going to widen the gap between middle class pupils in the two different sectors - different story for children from more deprived backgrounds. However it was bloody tough on parents who had kids at state school and were both working in the schools where the learning was on but needed parental involvement - but equally tough on teachers at privates - my teacher friends were seriously stressed by trying to provide a service that parents considered worthy of fees, and my friend who is deputy at a very famous prep now wants out. Some considering options going forward now they release they work at businesses who drained every drop from them and especially if they are schools opting out of the Teachers Pension Scheme. State school was the place to be as a teacher, much more protected.

A B from eton isn't 'dreadful'. Its a B. If the uni only asks for a B then it's worth the same as the B that the state school child gets.

And contextual offers aren't for all state students. They are for certain schools. The uni is quite transparent about which ones these are.

State school was the place to be as a teacher, much more protected

Are you serious?!

Well our school’s online provision was pretty awful Tbh. State primary. However since they went back I‘ve been impressed.
Doubt that they’ve “caught up” but they have learnt and awful lot, and at the same time are really enjoying despite there being quite a lot of changes to the way they do things.

The studies stating online learning is as effective as face to face (zoom) teaching have mostly been done on adults, and never in a scenario where children have been removed from most social contact for 12 weeks...
Live zoom was essential for us.
I can put my dyslectic 7 year old in front of pre-recorded lessons, but he won’t engage and he won’t learn very much. I can put him in front of a live zoom lessons in his small group (10 children), and he will discuss, engage and learn. While adults can leanr fine from pre-recorded, children aren’t just short adults.
And during lockdown, the children were starved for social interaction. Having discussions, shown and tell etc via zoom helped so much to keep them happy.
In the experience of our school (and many parents from other schools),zoom wasn‘t “only” feelgood (although I would happily taken any feel good during these 12 weeks), it was essential, especially with 2 working parents who need to keep their respective jobs.

@Janevaljane yup over lockdown they were much more protected from over workload (some quoted unions as the reason they didn’t have to teach via zoom) some would argue to the detriment of the children’s education - whereas the private school teachers I know were very very stressed and really hurt by some of the response of parents who were angry about provision / fee ratio.

Over workload? I suppose our school already had a robust online option. But the teachers would have been teaching anyway in that term so not sure they were overworked although different ways of doing things are always stressful. And yes, I'm sure not actually teaching was much less stressful

@Janevaljane yes schools have contextual codes but a number children who attend those schools will be having tutoring. Universities also have ever increasing quotas that they must meet and with the discourse about education at the moment that is only heading in one way. Hence the migration of some sixth formers to state schools (which actually doesn’t work as the judgment is on where GCSE’s were taken.) and yes a B grade A level at Eton is really not considered good if you have had tiny classes and top notch teaching compared to a B from a struggling comp which (for the untutored) is a remarkable achievement and rightly judged as such with an appropriate contextual offer.

@Janevaljane sounds like your school is fab and had the teachers’ backs - I assure you some didn’t and my friends realised they were working at businesses and it has made them evaluate their futures.

If a university has ABB entry requirements, it might have BBC for schools which have a contextual code.

If you go to Eton you will be offered ABB. Universities don't routinely raise the entry requirements for privately educated students.

I don't understand why this is constantly spoken about

Obviously, on the whole, private schools will always be better for a majority of things than state schools. That's why you pay more for things.

Unfortunately in life not everything is equal. And it wouldn't work if everything was.

eg, the entry requirements will be the same for Eton as for a non contextual comp.

@Janevaljane no they don’t raise them but they have quotas to fill and those quotas are heading year on year in one direction so that they can to some extent level the playing field that small classes give. But it doesn’t because it doesn’t take in to account tutoring. Right vino o clock here - have a great weekend!

WTF has Eton entry got to do with this ?

Yah dahling
not many 13+ kids will have gone feral this summer

Huh?

@ListeningQuietly you are right this chat has mutated more than the virus😂 currently it is full of those justifying paying £3,000 plus for a term of zoom and those justifying not doing it who probably wish they had that sort of cash spare for some support during lockdown. What it is not full of is the parents of kids who might really be affected long term and I wonder how the catch up funding for these children is going, probably not well going on the record of the recent Conservative governments’ towards funding education. Frankly if anyone has a parent bothering to be on an education chat on a fri night they are going to be just fine long term with or without 3 months of zoom as even if they aren’t at a vastly expensive school they are probably in a home brimming with books, magazines, tutors and support.

My kids are post A level
they got through the system before the clusterfuck of Gove and Cummings fully impacted
its heartbreaking to see the damage that was done and then compounded by COVID

@Janevaljane this was an interesting read my aunt was an Oxford prof and does some similar mentoring in Cornwall ... www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/education/2020/oct/10/britains-best-universities-are-dominated-by-private-schools-could-i-help-level-the-playing-field

Just about to read that article now flour and eggs thanks for sharing

I think more private schools do what used to be called 'facilitating' A levels. So more History, English Lit, Physics, less Photography, PE, Law, which I was sad to hear my dds friend was studying despite being super bright.

When I said that my friends suddenly realised over lock down they were working for businesses not just educational establishments it was because so much was expected of them by employees but they also had horrible emails from parents about standard of zoom lessons compared to fees being paid. But this story (excuse daily fail reference it is in other papers too...) just shows how SOME fee paying schools behave (not all by any means) in a really aggressive way
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8849539/Parents-private-school-pupils-hounded-unpaid-fees.html