ANSWERS NOW ADDED: questions about your child's education in lockdown? Post them here for our advice clinic with StarLine

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

We know loads of you have questions and concerns about your children's education at the moment, so we're pleased to announce an advice clinic with StarLine - the expert education and parenting helpline set up to help provide informed advice for parents during this weird and worrying time.

StarLine is a national home learning helpline giving parents and carers direct access to a team of qualified teachers, and education and parenting experts who can provide one-to-one advice, support and reassurance.

So if you've got a question about your child's learning that you'd like some expert help with, please post it up here. Topics the experts can address include all phases of school education and all subjects; ideas for tips, techniques and resources; support with family wellbeing and mental health; help for supporting children with SEND; how to approach structure and routines; ideas for making home-learning work for your situation and context; and ideas for coping with behavioural issues you may be dealing with.

(Please note StarLine is based in England and its advice will be based on the English curriculum and system.)

Once we've gathered up your questions we'll send them on to StarLine who will pass them on to the appropriate experts for answers, and we'll post up the answers (hopefully) next week.

if you'd prefer to contact them directly, you can call StarLine on 0330 313 9162 (calls are charged at your provider's local landline rate). Lines are open as follows:

Monday and Wednesday - 8am to 4pm and 7pm to 10pm
Tuesday, Thursday and Friday - 10am to 4pm
Sunday - 10am to 1pm

Thanks
MNHQ

Does anyone know of any government schemes to help single parents pay for childcare?

My boy is 2 in August. I already get tax free childcare, but my salary, whilst not bad, won't over childcare fees and mortgage/bills. My ex is currently jobless and I don't think that's going to change any time soon. Don't know what I'm going to do when school starts again in Spetember (I'm a teacher). Leaving him with his dad isn't an option, unfortunately.

While school was still happening, my 11 year old did everything by herself with excellent results. We never had to monitor homework let alone intervene. The look down version of her school only consists of one unstructured list of homework assignments, not coordinated between teachers. No teacher podcasts/videos/interactive sessions/phone calls, hardly feedback to homework. There was not a single message by the form tutor since lockdown started. The schools seems to get a lot of complaints from parents, I suppose, because they send defensive emails justifying they can not do anything else. After a few weeks she gave up and doesn't want to engage with school at all. We let her for some weeks, but have in the last few weeks been insisting she does a few hours every days. It's not working. The way the work is presented by the school is hardly accessible to 11 year olds. She refuses to let us intervene or help, because school has always been her own thing and source of independent achievement. It feels wrong to break what actually is a good characteristic of her learning, and if I try it just leads to not constructive arguments with her. I have really no idea what to do, but am getting increasingly worried as this will go on until September, and likely even longer with future waves of the pandemic. Would be most grateful for suggestions.