Parent survey about preferences for how school could operate in September that's left me a bit blue

[Michaelahpurple]

Completed a survey from our school seeking to gauge parent preferences to help their planning of what might be possibly in September.

Questions varied from "would prefer your child to return/stay with online" to "Would you prefer 1 week in, 1 week out or set days, targeting particular subjects and id so which " to "hot meals taking 2.5 hrs or cold grab and go". Confirmed no trips, and can't come in for breakfast, which my son generally likes to do etc. Even debate about whether the day should start and end later to try to avoid the London commuting problems. (I can't imagine how travelling in is going to work for London children unless the tube is back up to capacity)

I realise that none of these scenarios are new but I guess I have been carefully not really thinking about it and filling in the survey really made me focus on how far we are from getting them back to school ans, once back, them having a normal, full school life.

All rather depressing. Am I being a bit of a droopy-drawers?

We had a to fill in a similar survey and it just makes you realise how anything that's short of "normal" is just not really good enough.

Though if like ours, your school is just making a range of plans - no one has any idea what might be happening in September.

DCs Primary school are all going back on Mon so there is hope! Hang in there

Ugggghhhhh this just makes me so depressed... I don't want our kids to have to deal with this crap.

Beachcomber - do you mean that all the year groups are going back?? Are you in the U.K.? Schools are not allowed to go against government guidance.

Primary schools in England can now accept pupils from all years, subject to class sizes of 15 and maintaining social distancing where possible. The government is encouraging as many as possible to do so, but they don't have to at the moment.

Our primary school is having all kids back, in groups of up to 15 for 2 days per week. Half of the school is in Monday and Tuesday, they deep clean on Wednesday and the other half is in on Thursday and Friday.

Beachcomber - do you mean that all the year groups are going back?? Are you in the U.K.? Schools are not allowed to go against government guidance

It’s not against government guidance. Schools are not obligated to get all children back before the summer, but that doesn’t mean they’re not allowed to.
Our school have year 5 and 2 going back on Monday, then years 4 and 3 will each get a week before the summer holidays.

Our school has all junior children back from tomorrow.

I wish our school would even do a survey. Apparently they have no interest in knowing what parents would find most manageable. Commuting a big issue here too.

The problem is we have no idea what things will be like in September but hopefully schools will now start to plan for lots of different scenarios.
I would like to think all children will be back in September but very doubtful it will be full time for everyone.
And I agree op that’s a very depressing thought but probably good we acknowledge that’s likely how it’s going to be for at least this year.

1m social distancing, if comes in, will make a significant difference to school in September

Glad, if slightly jealous , that some schools are getting back up and running.

My other boy's school had a presentation on their thoughts - no contact sports, no singing, drama to be radio drama, no large ensembles in music Again, all a bit depressing.

I think that there is no way that anybody knows what the situation will be in September and schools asking loads of questions of their parents is simply going to lead to even more confusion.
We are going to have to wait and see what the government are going to do about September. The one thing that has been impressed on the DfE by every union, every teacher association and governance body is make decisions now and stick to them. Whether they are listening is maybe a different matter but I would hope that by the end of June there will be much more clarity. The bottom line is whether we can open with classes of 30 or whether we are still taking classes of 15 in primaries.

There is a real tension between certainty of the rules, which would help schools to plan vs a hope that we won't all be locked into a worse situation than necessary because of guidance being finalised to early. Hard to see the right place to pitch that balance

All we've had is they hope to expect online learning to continue next academic year. No survey but probably a bit pointless at this stage but sounded like whole year of predominately online learning being planned. Daughter goes into year 10 and GCSEs in September.