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Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

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Original poster

If you’re WFH and homeschooling

15 replies

Hooletthedogsout · 08/01/2021 13:04

I WFH full time along with homeschooling DC in Year 1. School has been sending on work through daily PowerPoints with a recorded video we refer to. Obviously, needs supervision and support with all the writing and reading. DC is bright and does well in school but is a very reluctant home learner. It has been very stressful as I have a toddler as well and even with DH doing half the school work with him,we barely manage to complete the set tasks. We also have to provide daily feedback with no additional contact from school via video/zoom etc. Today the teacher published work and announced awards to students who have been sending in their work everyday and all of them were DC with SAHMs. There was no requirement to upload work everyday and in hindsight should’ve emailed whatever little we managed.I’m feeling really rubbish and guilty as there’s no way we can spend focussed attention on DC to improve his writing, spellings etc and worried he’ll fall behind compared to DC who are at school or have dedicated parents to spend time educating them. Are other schools also doing the same?

OP posts:

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Heartofgoldmumof2 · 08/01/2021 20:29

We are getting work set daily: phonics, English, maths, reading task and science/ geography/music. Plus videos such as an introduction to multiplication. My daughter is in yr 2. I work 50 hrs a week and no critical worker place available. It’s going to be impossible we will have to complete work Saturday and Sunday to catch up a bit. I understand your feelings I feel the same! I can’t keep up with the SAHMs

ilovesushi · 08/01/2021 20:57

It's just not possible. I'm also working full time from home and I am flat out. I can barely find time to make lunch. This week has been very stressful. As a family we just can't keep up with the pace of the school work. I am going to rethink next week, but I think we will definitely lower our expectations for DD in Y6. Some online maths, some reading and free writing, then she's done. Won't be downloading and printing anything from school. I just don't have the time, energy or headspace. DS is in secondary and the pace is unreal. Again, we are going to have figure what we can do as a family without breaking everyone.

AegonT · 09/01/2021 09:01

My husband is a secondary school teacher who's teaching live lessons from home half the day and I'm an accountant working from home. DD is in year 1 we have no other kids yet but I'm pregnant. We pick and choose what to do from what the school send and don't do some work that they want to see. Often it's easier to use a workbook for DD rather than online learning as we don't have enough decent sized screens for her to use and she needs closer supervision on them. We often do activities with her that are similar to the type of thing the teacher has set but as we are working with what we have at home, working to what suits our diaries and can plan it the evening before (school work is issued 9am same day) it is much easier. Also they set work for the whole class with a tiny extension task at the end so often it isn't the right level. I know from the comments on Google Classroom and WhatsApp that a lot of parents are doing all the set work and will attend all live lessons next week but we simply can't whilst working from home and we won't feel bad about it. The school have said work can be done and submitted at weekends if you can't do it in the week - we decided we all need our weekends to be work and home-school free! We took a similar approach in lockdown 1 and her teacher said he was more than happy with her progress when she returned and he was very impressed with the work we'd put on Tapestry even though it wasn't what he'd set and she is still working above age-related expectations.

SouthLondonMommy · 09/01/2021 13:44

Task completion should so very obviously be across a 7 day period so that working parents can flex according to work commitments and catch up over the weekend.

Any primary school that is expecting very young children to be able to complete every task daily be a specific time of day etc in my view is blatantly sexist as they are assuming there is a parent (typically a mother) whose stay at home or whose job doesn't matter.

Prioritise keep your job for the longer term benefit of your family! The rest of it will work out in time.

Yellowmellow2 · 09/01/2021 13:54

@SouthLondonMommy

Task completion should so very obviously be across a 7 day period so that working parents can flex according to work commitments and catch up over the weekend.

Prioritise keep your job for the longer term benefit of your family! The rest of it will work out in time.

Why is that sexist?

SouthLondonMommy · 09/01/2021 17:08

Because it has been proven through data that during the pandemic the extra work of homeschooling and childcare has disproportionately fallen on women.

Imposing a homeschooling structure that is very challenging unless you have a non-working parent is statistically going to negatively impact women disproportionately.

I'm not saying it should be so, but that's the reality of it and schools should be aware of the data on this already.

Avidreader12 · 10/01/2021 14:03

Re primary age I actually think tasks should be completed mon-Friday within school hours only, when school open kids don’t work weekends to give them a break. Our school is marking and setting tasks adjusting for class understanding to leave work til weekend makes it harder for the teacher to do that

Lockdownbear · 10/01/2021 14:14

Actually I think primaries should set the tasks and parents do them when they can. If that means in the evening or over the weekend so be it.

Some GPs will be fine with IT and helping kids others won't be. Don't assume that every child will have a parent who's at home some kids will be getting sent to GPs with 2 or 3 cousins.

For some families it might actually suit to allow kids to stay up late and sleep late so parents can get their own work done.

Parents need flexibility to do what they can when they can.

SouthLondonMommy · 10/01/2021 14:29

@Lockdownbear

Actually I think primaries should set the tasks and parents do them when they can. If that means in the evening or over the weekend so be it.

Some GPs will be fine with IT and helping kids others won't be. Don't assume that every child will have a parent who's at home some kids will be getting sent to GPs with 2 or 3 cousins.

For some families it might actually suit to allow kids to stay up late and sleep late so parents can get their own work done.

Parents need flexibility to do what they can when they can.

^^ 100%

The kids don't need a weekend break if they aren't doing the work during the week. People have jobs that are not compatible with school hours and schools should be sensitive to that. These are exceptional times!

JaninaDuszejko · 10/01/2021 15:10

Our primary school isn't setting awards but there are very few SAHPs and I can imagine a lot of complaints if they did. They have made it very clear that they know we're balancing work and school and we get lots of positive feedback back about engagement. There's no live learning, although with 2 DC at secondary who are having full school days as live lessons we've ended up buying a third computer anyway. Apple are doing well out of us this pandemic.

Ylvamoon · 10/01/2021 15:15

Please don't worry, just do what you can. I would however privately email teacher and tell them about the Awards being inappropriate in the current situation as pupils with working parents ot the ones at school will be losing out.

Woodifer · 10/01/2021 18:34

last time my two ended up stuck on their tablets all day and we virtually gave up on schooling - I just don't want that for them again - want to ask work about furlough or partial furlough - but also shitting myself will jeopardize my job.

HSHorror · 12/01/2021 20:22

Im a sahp and it's hard enough flicking between stuff for 2 kids (one very difficult).
No way i could have done anything when working. My deadlines were ridiculously tight anyway.
I actually prefer worksheets sent out on sundays.
Zoom/oak etc is constantly setting the stuff up. i dont feel dc2 yr r has gained anything from oak. It was fun but dont agree with the ones chosen.

Then IT issues. Printing daily is just wasting so much of my time and means the work isnt ready especially if systems go down.
I cant leave dc2 to watch an oak lesson as she is surprisingly skilled with the remote.

BendingSpoons · 13/01/2021 08:13

I was ill last week. We managed to do most of the home learning amongst working (Reception so not too much, nothing live) but hadn't uploaded it all. The school had said both 'learning is really important' and 'do what you can'. They announced Star of the Week. I don't live SotW anyway, but it particularly annoyed me. I guess there are less 'rules' to the award, so arguably this week she could be in with a chance based on last week's delayed learning. Although this week the system keeps crashing, so it's tricky to do work even when we have time.

Frogusha · 14/01/2021 22:04

Hahaha! That happened to me in the first lockdown. I hated reading the weekly newsletter where stars of the week were never my DD as I didn’t upload anything to Tapestry (and there was nothing to upload). The SAHMs did like 10 uploads a DAY, and as if that wasn’t enough, would post pics and videos to the parents WhatsApp group. That I found really annoying.
We don’t do anything on the w/e - I work hard trying (and not really managing) to combine both during the week so on the w/e I can rest (not really, they still have all their extra-curricular activities, online) - sigh

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