Take our survey about schools - vouchers to be won

[JustineBMumsnet]

The pandemic has, of course, affected all of us in some way. We are interested in hearing from parents with at least one child at school how things have been and how they are now.

This survey is open to Mumsnet users with at least one child who has been enrolled in a school during academic years 2019/2020 or 2020/2021

All who complete the survey will receive an entry into our monthly prize draw where 3 Mumsnet users will win a £150 voucher for the store of their choice (from a list).

Click here to complete the survey.

Thanks and good luck!
MNHQ

Standard Insight Terms and Conditions apply

Love the idea of awarding the government a grade from 9-1!
I actually Can’t remember the answers to a lot of questions here though... which lockdown was like what.

I tried but can't answer. Too many questions don't have an undecided option.

It would be good to be able to answer more than once, I have one child in a special needs school who's had a massively different experience to my other two children in mainstream school.

I would've liked a middle option not happy or unhappy, because some things have just been meh. Nothing to complain about but not really jumping for joy either.

Trickier to complete than I thought as DD transitioned to secondary in Sept. Secondary taught full lessons throughout the Jan/April lockdown.

Primary OTOH told their year 6's to watch bbc bite size and do some white rose maths.

There isn't an option to say one school good the other terrible.

What does lessons in the school building mean? DS was a critical worker child and did remote learning in the school building but not face to face in class.

Also the type of work provided is divided into worksheets, pre recorded lessons and live lessons. DS has websites to access for maths and sciences, and had work to complete that was not worksheets. Survey seems primary focused.

Done!

Done

Quite a jump from happy to unhappy options. For a lot of the questions I would have preferred a middle option, like ok.

The provision in lockdown 2 was FAR better than in lockdown 1 so it felt unfair to judge without making that distinction

Yes, like PPs I would have liked a middle option. Also tricky to answer for the second lockdown if the child was in school, as it seems to have been assumed here that they were then being taught, rather than supervised (or not) for the same provision as home learners. The second lockdown was worse in many ways, but there was nowhere to explain this.

Well that felt like you’re looking for stats on why schools are bad and what they did wrong. Can we have a survey grading nhs services next please?

Wish I could have made a point about state vs private provision. The disparity in the first lockdown was shocking. My dc are at state, I have friends with dc at private or who teach at private - they went instantly into online teaching with no break. Even though our state school was much better in lockdown 2, my dc are still feeling the impact of the lack of teaching in lockdown 1.

Really hard to answer as lockdown 1 and lockdown 2 were handled totally differently by the school, and there’s no way to reflect that in the survey. I haven’t responded as it wouldn’t be an accurate picture whichever I chose

This what I thought:

FFS - I have just completed a questionnaire and this has really pissed me off.
How many children does he have that have experienced these past couple of school years, I wonder? Children slow to readjust to the classroom because of the lack of regular structure and discipline - how dare he!
Did he have to try to home school and work from home (maybe building his own new fledgling business) ?
Kids that have been completely uprooted from their own normal structure and timetable, not even just once - our kids have really suffered and struggled in many ways through this pandemic - separated from friends, school, groups, playing normally.
They are not to blame - they have all been through massive disruption, as we all have - but it’s such a bigger proportion of their lives compared to adults, with often less understanding of the reasons.

I am annoyed at this.

I answered based on one DC and one school but my DC are spread across three schools and each has been different. The one I used for the surgery has been fucking useless throughout, they were fairly useless pre-covid and DC was just riding out their final year before starting a new school next term, but they now use covid as an excuse to absolve themselves of doing all but the bare minimum. The "work" they set in lockdown was a link to the Twinkl website and that was it, no instructions, no steer on what to download, just a link and nothing else. Their idea of keeping in touch and checking on the children's wellbeing was an email to parents once a fortnight that said "is your child okay?" and you just had to reply yes or no. I could have killed them all, kept replying yes to the email, and no one would have been any the wiser. SEN children are getting intervention work sent home "because covid, we don't have enough time/enough staff to do it in school". If your child is late for any reason they're not allowed into school that day "because covid, we can't allow access via the main entrance". No bags allowed "because covid, they might have germs on them" but packed lunch bags are fine and reading book bags are sent home daily. Patronising emails sent home to all parents asking us not to form bubbles even if entitled to and not to meet outdoors as "selfish (yet perfectly legal) behaviour like this is jeopardising your child's education".

Yet my other DCs schools have been much better. Online lessons that were a mix of pre-recorded and live lessons, instruction videos on how to complete specific pieces of work, a mix of screen based work and work to be done away from screens (e.g., science experiments that could be done at home, PE lessons to do outside, art projects). The return to school has been handled much better by them with them striving to make school as normal as it can possibly be, one of the two schools even invited the children in before reopening (in small, socially distanced groups) to show them the classroom layouts, the one way system, and to walk them through the changes so that they knew what to expect and it wasn't such a shock on day one.

It's the inconsistency that annoys me. Some schools are going over and above while others are scraping along and swinging the lead.

Some problems with the survey design: you can answer for a child now in reception, but half the questions are about lockdown 1 (last school year) when that child would not yet have been at school. The only viable option is to say that child had no lessons during lockdown 1, but that will skew the findings as it will imply schools were offering less than they actually were.

I think the questions were weighted heavily towards senior school which doesn't apply to me. But I do like the idea of grading the government handling

Done!
I enjoyed grading the government
Having seen some comments I think my daughters school have come out rather well.

It didn’t really make sense to ask the questions about schooling in lockdown one when my child is in reception and hadn’t started school then. I answered “none” to lots of them which May skew your results.

Agree with others - there were a lot of questions where I would have opted for an "ok" rather than "quite happy" or "quite unhappy". There was too much of a jump in the options.

done

@Sertadopt

It didn’t really make sense to ask the questions about schooling in lockdown one when my child is in reception and hadn’t started school then. I answered “none” to lots of them which May skew your results.

Exactly. I tried to leave the questions about lockdown 1 blank because of this but couldn't submit so I haven't done so.