So when are we going back to school?

[RaraRachael]

I was under the impression that NS had announced that all schools in Scotland would start back on August 11th. I have had surveys from my local authority asking when we would like the week's holiday in lieu and if we want 1 or 2 in-service days before we start back in August.

Last night a colleague posted a piece showing all the start dates from the different authorities - some were 10th August, !1th, 12th up to the 18th and 19th.

I am totally confused

There are many reasons besides attainment for most parents to worry - given the attainment gap was widening and already a political focus though, I’d have thought it would motivate the SNP to change their plans.

If the Scottish Government are going to insist on blended learning, why can't they follow the example of what has been done in England with Oak National Academy classroom.thenational.academy/ ? It is free to access for everyone, no logins or passwords required, and they post a full and systematic schedule of new recorded lessons every week for every year group in Maths, English, History, Geography, Science, French etc. We have have been using some of the primary stuff. Worth a look as an alternative to making wrist bands that say 'I am awesome' on them or collecting and counting sticks and stones in the garden yet again...

Of course, it's far from ideal having no interaction but if every child is given access to a laptop or similar, this might be the nearest we can get to levelling the playing field and ensuring that every child in Scotland has access to the same quality of (hopefully good) material.

The education systems in Scotland and England may be different but surely the same basic principles of maths, science etc don't change, whoever your government happen to be.

given the attainment gap was widening and already a political focus though,

But this will narrow the attainment gap. Because state sector students will all be performing at an equally crap level. Job done!

The Oak Academy is a superb idea but needs a centralised approach which the SNP are failing to deliver. Each council doing its own thing, each school within a council area doing its own thing too.

I don't think there's any will to standardise anything across the UK. If that proved successful, then the SNP would lose it's battle cry.

Although I notice the BBC Bitesize stuff (which is excellent quality, DS watches it every day) looks to be an English production. I wonder how a Scottish Broadcasting Corporation would have risen to that challenge. Not to mention the virtual Chelsea Flower Show, which saved the sanity of so many.

Maybe we could have Jackie Bird live from the Glasgow Tanny Gardens?

My ds is another who needs a human to interact with him, if his biology teacher sends him another broken link to bitesize I think he will quit biology altogether. He needs someone to answer questions that he has about whatever subject it is, not a snippy email reply 4 days later!

Out all his teachers one is brilliant with the teaching and interaction online. He feels like he is going fail his Nat 5s already and he is usually in the top 10% for all subjects. He hates the idea of failing so doesn't see the point of doing the work!

Also this week his laptop broke and his English work was saved on it and he managed to email the teacher from my laptop to let her know and he got a rude reply back, thankfully I managed to sort it and his work will now be late but neither ds or I are computer literate, we can do the basics and are trying our best!

I may cried this week, I think I've reached my limit now!

I just see the Oak Academy as a good model. Of course, being a proud nation, we would need to have our own Scottish version. What about the Thistle Academy? Swinney Academy??

I'm sure if the Scottish government paid staff to produce this, it could happen. Not sure what Education Scotland is up to but I don't think it's this.
We don't have a national curriculum though but I could see it working in some subject areas.

just for information uniform can't be enforced anywhere in Scotland in state schools, there can be no discipline for failing to wear uniform or exclusions or denial of privileges,etc the only thing that is categorically banned are football strips because of sectarianism
"Scotland
In Scotland school uniform policy is not governed by legislation but falls to schools and
the Local Authority Education Departments to determine. The Discipline Task Group
set up by the Scottish Executive ‘Better Behaviour-better Learning’ report published in
2011 recommends that ‘schools should consult with pupils, teachers, parents/carers in
order to agree a dress code for children and young people. Local authorities should
support schools in the implementation of their agreed dress code’.8
Cost
Most local authority education departments provide help with the cost of school clothing
to families on low incomes. Policies vary between authorities.
9
Enforcement
There is no reference to enforcement in the guidance"
schools may give the impression it is compulsory but there is nothing they can really do if you send kid in jeans and t shirt

@SockYarn unfortunately it will widen the gap. I’m a support teacher working across our authority, but my pupils span the attainment range. I’ve been added to a lot of secondary google classrooms and the difference in engagement between the top and bottom sets is stark. I have one bottom set S3 class where only 15 out of 30 have joined and only 4 are regularly submitting work. In the top sets nearly all are engaging in some form.

Education Scotland has been woeful. If you go on and follow the links for, say, English (my subject) they pretty much say read a book.

They held a webinar on Thursday for English teachers which I signed up for. But the actual webinar was only accessible via Glow (barely used any more). I queried this and told them I have "Teams" but adding me this way was not allowed.

Given that we have one exam board and one curriculum, how hard could it be to try to make this work.

And don't get me started on the SQA, still taking full fees for exams from schools and returning nothing in spite of the fact schools had to award the grades. Nothing given back.

As an examiner for them I would have earned £1500 and had 3 nights and 3 meals paid in hotels. None of the millions they have saved on that alone have gone into, for example, getting experienced examiners to record podcasts to support pupils.

It is a shit show. And try finding any nugget of actual information in anything Swinney says. Oh, and his brother runs English for the SQA.

A nice cosy wee world there.

That’s right, we had a kid that was sent in home clothes for years - I would send them in anything easily washable and not worry too much about it.

Our school have told us we are back 13th August & that's about it. P1/P7 are having days in school over June.

I see some posters saying BBC Bitesize is good.

It isn't. Its shit. Online bitesize is too easy for DD so she refuses to do any of it and will only do the school work - which isn't much.

She will only do the essential work, not any of the "if you fancy it you can do this too" that the teachers send through.

She won't watch any educational shows on the telly.

She does do school work every day, which is more than many of her friends. DH and I take education seriously but its becoming increasingly hard to get her interested and willing the longer that this nonsense goes on.

If I return to work and schools are still on blended learning, I am not confident her grandparents will be able to help her due to their ages and lack of technological knowledge, so she could fall behind even more.

I want to WFH permanently and I wouldn't mind DD doing online learning part time if it was much better than it has been so far.

Are any of the teachers posting on here in WD Council as it would be good to get an insider view of what the hell is going on.

@KatySun we've had exactly the same issue. A seven year old can't remember doing fractions a couple of terms ago, and certainly not sufficiently well to be able to build on it, alone!

Why we can't have a 20 minute Monday webinar with a teacher, who'll lay out what they're going to learn this week, is beyond me. It would put their learning into context, and give them back confidence in and contact with, their teacher.

Feeling positive atm - later today, maybe tomorrow, I'll be downloading the SQA course content and skill level required and use that as a base for 'teaching'. I'm sure I can teach the subjects my son is doing, it's only AH maths and chemistry after all!

Although he's supposed to be focussing on writing his first draft of his personal statement. That's without knowing what or where he wants to go to uni.

I did have a chuckle at Fife council - they confirmed what the first day of term would be confirming that children will return on Wednesday 12th August and two days later confirmed Wednesday is deep clean day!

Can't even spot silly mistakes like that.

We need national online schooling with live teaching. Or just to accept this is on the way out and in 2 months time the kids should go back to school.

We haven't had anything from council and only a letter from school saying full uniform policy will apply and a link of where to order it from (primary).

I'm so stressed about the whole thing.

live national teaching - so every S1 child in the country is in an online classroom at the same time? What would be the point of that? It's not like they could interact with the teacher.

Uninform is insane, I think I'd fight that with the school.

live national teaching - so every S1 child in the country is in an online classroom at the same time? What would be the point of that? It's not like they could interact with the teacher.

Because it's better than just posting a worksheet on teams. We managed to have a webinar through Teams with big boss yesterday and there was a chat session at the end for questions.

Certainly better than nothing.

A 'lecture' on differentiation would have made a difference to my child the other week, for example.

And not every child. The ones not in school. There's a whole tranche of kids who will struggle to ever go back as they've discovered home school works for them.

Down to 13 ICU confirmed cases in Scotland and 569 hospital cases. A week ago was 16 ICU and 630 hospital cases.

Is Sturgeon aiming for eradication? Seems pointless unless you close your borders forever..

Sorry going off tangent slightly.

I genuinely think it'll probably take the pubs opening (and everything associated with that) to get a real picture of where we are wrt the virus. And 2 weeks after that takes us pretty much up August when it'll be deemed too late for schools to go back to normal.

I noticed a pp saying that schools are also creating a 'normal' timetable and I wonder whether that's true in every case. Timetabling is such a big job, particularly in these bonkers unprecedented times that id be surprised if two had been created. Hope so though.

On a personal note I'm peed off that, as a teacher we'll get pretty much no summer holiday this year. By the time things are really getting back to normal it'll be August. And I know I've been home for 3 months, blah blah, but have been working while looking after two toddlers so not quite a holiday.

@Invisimamma please see my note above about this it is unenforceable esppecially in primary schools in Scotland they can't send your kid home or refuse to teach or punish them in anyway if you send them in jeans and t shirt in England at secondary schools they can
Some things are school rules and it helps if everyone follows them (it does not mean has legal authority to enforce this also applies to other things that come up regualrly like at my kids school you have to be p5 to walk home alone it is balderdash) I would suggest to sticking to roughly school colours like grey trousers white shirt school sweater and any suitable PE kit you have
Very few schools in Scotland have rules about shoes socks bags coats anyway