What should we expect from a primary school during school closure?

[Pitaramus]

Its clear to me that schools won’t be back for some time. I’m trying to work out what I should expect from my children’s school during this time without being unreasonable and expecting too much.

Me and DH are working and have 2 primary aged children and a toddler. We’ve been cobbling together work for the older two during the days to keep their routine over the last two weeks of term and the holidays and taking it in turns to do homeschooling / childcare / our actual day jobs. It’s tricky!

I was hoping that from the beginning of this coming term the school would provide some online teaching to actual teach the children rather than just send them off to get on with worksheets but we’ve now been told they’ll be setting a bunch of work a week at a time. I don’t think it will be marked, just set and then they will be left to get on with it.

This leaves me as the teacher which would be fine if I didn’t have a two year old and a job! In the circumstances I was hoping for a bit more from the schools.

Both my children’s teachers are child free and from what I can tell they are on a rota to be in a local school with key worker children (I think once a week). So this isn’t a question of them not having the time to do more. They are both really enthusiastic teachers and seem to enjoy their jobs.

Is it unrealistic because of the age of the children to expect them to be able to teach the children remotely, say by sending videos and then setting work and marking it and providing feedback? Obviously there is no perfect solution but I need to understand the reason why they are approaching it the way they are and not doing more so as to decide whether to contact them / the headteacher or whether to just leave it and carry on as I am. I don’t want to be unrealistic or unreasonable in my expectations.

I’d be grateful if any teachers could give me an insight into why they are approaching things in this way or whether they could be doing more.

I agree it's unbelievable @LemonRedwood, but this is what one of the teachers posted earlier up this thread:

" Nowhere in the terms and conditions of a teaching contract or indeed anywhere in life would anyone have to put themselves in the position should they feel uncomfortable.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't feel comfortable filming a 5/10 minute video of teaching. It wouldn't come naturally to me. ."

And I would support that teacher 100%, because the psychological impact on our teachers is important too.

I can see you are trying to bait me now, so I won't engage further after this post.

Girasol - the fact your dc has had 5 different classes teachers in year one shows there's an issue with your school and retention of staff.

After a few years doing supply at schools like when mine were babies, the reasons for inability to retain staff were usually down to one or more of these issues:

Poor senior leadership
Poor behaviour of children
Poor behaviour of parents

So perhaps talk to your school to resolve your problems. If the issue is poor senior leadership chances then you may want to reconsider your choice of school for your DC. High staff turnover is a huge red flag.

Sorry typing and talking to said dc at the same time but hopefully you get the gist

In fact girasol - if you had started a thread saying - I'm concerned about my dc's school. My year one child has had 5 class teachers this year and we've had limited contact or guidance since schools closed - you probably would have recieved great advice and support from most of the teachers on this thread.

The best feedback is verbal. Rught there and then. Lots of written marking is often more for the benefit of adults, unless the child is older. Younger children would not benefit from being sat in front of a screen for an hour listening to the teacher. Even more so without the physical resources/ talk partner etc. I'm interested to see how private schools are live teaching to nursery or reception, other than reading, basic counting and maybe phonics??? All of which can be simply done with parents (even those working full time) as it wouldn't take long. Younger children in my opinion are better off reading every day, writing and maths linked in a fun way, such as writing a recipe, counting ingredients etc. and lots of outdoor play (space permitting).

We had virtually nothing from one school - we've had one maths game to play for the week and that's it for maths, some spellings to work on for English and that's it. That's for next week - prior to that we had nothing at all from them.

Prior to closure they sent out a letter checking which parents had access to email communication and online resources. Can you guess which way they sent the letter out? Yes, via email! The email software is a bit of a flipping diva anyway and quite often messages don't go through - it's so bad that at times I've stood in the school reception while the office staff have been sending an email to check if it's going through on my phone!

The head is openly saying that they're going to be using the closure time to work on a curriculum revamp for next year - which is great... but not for these kids in the here and now, and especially not for those kids whose time at the school is ending in July who have pretty much been abandoned. The class teacher is doing what she can via email in response to individual contact - but the Head seems to have just viewed it as bonus time for planning and sod the current cohort - I've lost a lot of respect for the Head over it.

The other school sent home a batch of sites they'd registered with as a short term measure (again there are issues with access to this but at least there was some effort there) and the teachers have been checking in with the kids on the classroom software and they've obviously been working to set an online learning platform up and running for the start of this term proper that the kids can use relatively self-sufficiently. Yes, it means there's going to be the joy of me having to enforce it - but at least it means there's something set for the point in the curriculum that those kids are up to and not just me cobbling it together like we have been. They've at least tried to put the effort in and not just ditched the kids into planning for September mode like the other school has.

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I teach at a private school, so luckily all children have access to a device. I do live registration at 8:20 with an outline of the day, followed by guided reading, literacy and maths lessons, all live with differentiated work set via Seesaw. After the teaching input I get the kids to mute themselves and I do the same and then do live interventions with those kids who need more input. If anyone needs help they unmute and ask, and I get to them immediately or give a time frame if I'm already helping someone else. Afternoons are then spent marking/giving feedback and planning for the next day (pupils complete specialist lessons at this time). We then go live again at 3:15 for story time and book discussion followed by a virtual after school club (each teacher does one a week).

It's tricky juggling with my own two children and thankfully my husband can do his work in the evenings (I let him nap between 12:30-3 when I can give feedback as and when). I do think it's important to show we are trying, not just shrug and aim for the lowest common denominator. Do all kids take part? No. But then again everyone's education shouldn't stand still because of that.

Giralsol, I already said that teachers may not feel comfortable being filmed. Some don't want an online presence of their image. You ignored that comment.

Girasol quite frankly, you're ridiculous.

Just an FYI:

Another thing...who is supplying all thus recording equipment you talk off? I sure as hell haven't been given a phone, laptop or iPad to use to facilitate this.

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This seems to have descended a little into teachers getting cross with parents and vice versa. That wasn’t what I intended at all. If you look at my OP I describe my kids’ teachers in positive terms, I really value what teachers do. Clearly there will be great teachers and rubbish teachers out there and everything in between but I’m not looking to start a thread on that.

I was simply looking for advice as to what I should expect in these odd times. My children are at a state primary and all my friends kids are at private schools. So in my personal life I have no point of comparison with other state primaries. The private schools clearly have an ulterior motive around claiming to be able to deliver everything remotely so I was already slightly sceptical about that anyway.

I’ve learnt from this thread, from the teachers who’ve posted comments and from other parents that the schools can do more than my school is doing and so I won’t feel unreasonable if I do decide to ask for a bit more direction. I’ve also learnt that schools take a whole school approach which explains it a bit too.

To all the teacher sending flowers, I in no way meant to offend anyone. This isn’t a thread to criticise teachers - in fact it’s the teachers who i direct my original question to because I value your opinion!

What do the flowers mean?

I would have hoped for younger (mine are y1 & y2) to at least have a short zoom type live session daily even if just to watch a video together - not expecting tonnes but mine are missing their friends and teachers.

Dont need any marking or homework though