Thinking of moving DD from her school at end of year 7 due to poor handling of closure period - anyone else in the same boat

[fancymcfancypants]

That's it really. We've been really, really disappointed with provision from the school during the closure:

• nothing whatsoever in the way of 'live' teaching
• not a single call from the school, pastoral or otherwise, until 2 weeks ago when a teacher that DD had never spoken to before called to check in on her (as if she'd be comfortable sharing any concerns with someone she doesn't know from adam)
• virtually no effort at all put into lesson planning (sample maths lesson 'here are the answers to Tuesday's worksheet, go over anything you got wrong')
• in instances where children have fallen behind by a long way e.g. one of DD's friends who didn't submit work for two weeks, no contact from the school at all

Complained to HOY (as have many other parents) and was told they were going to try and do more live teaching but some of the teachers 'aren't comfortable' online.

She likes the school generally. It's viewed very highly in the part of London that we're in, very sought-after etc and before Covid we were fairly happy with it. But what she's getting just isn't anywhere close to proper schooling and the thought of it all dragging on into next year is really dispiriting.

They are now saying they aren't sure KS3 will be back at school in September and I'm thinking of doing whatever it takes to somewhere else for her. We recently moved and are now in the catchment for a local academy that seems (according to other parents) to be handling this stuff better so was wondering about going to ask them to put her on a waiting list for an occasional place (which I'm told do come up). Alternatively, we can afford to pay private school fees but wanted DC to go to state schools. But now I feel we'd be letting DD down if we don't explore other options that are available to us.

I suppose I'm just putting this out there to see if anyone else has been massively disappointed with how their DC's school have handled the past few months and is also considering moving.

I’m just popping in to say that I have nearly given myself a nervous breakdown trying to look after my toddler on my own and do live lessons over lockdown.

There is utterly no way I can also chase up attendance as well.

Our students have iPads (Apple school) an online homework system that was week established years ago and an online portal we’ve used for ages.

I have been consistently teaching lessons all of lockdown at the same time every week. For 14 weeks.

The attendance has been better recently but it is still less than 30%. That’s nearly a hundred phone calls/ e-mail chase ups for me to write every day.

Nope.

I put the lesson link online every Monday via e-mail AND the homework portal. They have talking PowerPoints too.

Beyond that it is out of my control.

What you DD has been getting is appropriate. We were setting 3hrs a week for all subjects before half term and had parents begging us to stop because their children were spending eight hours a day in front of a laptop and were still behind.

1.5 hours per subject per week with additional live lessons sounds about right.

@BelleSausage it sounds like you are doing an amazing job. Well done and thank you for posting. It really is helpful to hear what is going on on the other side of things. I wasn't by the way suggesting that individual teachers should be chasing up everyone who isn't submitting work for their subject but if, as with DDs friend, someone is 2 weeks behind on everything I guess I'd expect someone at the school, a form tutor, a head of year... to pick up on that.

Live teaching isn't the 'gold standard' but it's obvious to me that some kind of live human interaction is desirable rather than just the endless worksheets and online apps. I appreciate of course that that isn't possible all the time but some of the time surely. And, if not, then at least recorded videos from teachers. Our school suggested their reason for not doing anything like that was because, as @noblegiraffe says, they don't want to provide for some what they can't provide for all. But it's a school with a relatively low percentage of children on FSM whereas I know of other schools in the borough with much higher percentages who are providing much more interactive teaching. In one case, they approached a wealthy private school to provide tech equipment to those who didn't have it at school and said school sent stuff almost immediately.

Anyway, I've probably moaned enough. It's been really helpful reading everyone's responses and it has made me reconsider whether I've been expecting too much from the school so thank you to all of you who've taken the time to post. It's a bloody difficult time for everyone.

@noblegiraffe - yes, we are in the UK (London) but concern seems to be that the school isn't set up to be able to bring everyone back and have appropriate safety measures in place (not sure what they are or what that means but that's what we've been told).

Not providing the best scenario because all children cannot access it is a race to the bottom. It’s meaning more need to catch up so the overall situation is worse. Now the case is that those with educated parents will be ok but others won’t be. Individual schools should make decisions based on the local situation regarding parents and fsm children. Saying the majority cannot have something because a small minority cannot have the identical provision isn’t good enough. I agree op.

@fancymcfancypants

Who else would be doing the chasing up?

Students at secondary level should very much be grown up enough to e-mail their teacher and say they are behind. I’ve had a few of those and am always happy to help.

Perhaps it is a valuable lesson for students about speaking up if they need something.

The cruel truth is that this situation is going to require our children to take more responsibility for their own learning. I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing.

less than 30% .
I just checked with DD (Year 9), and she confirms that most of her class turn up for lessons. A lot of the lessons are live now, although it has taken a while to get to this point. And that the year leader will chase if they don't, and harangue the parents until they do.
We just got a school report, and it had four categories - "Attendance", "Behaviour" "Attitude to Online Learning" and "Quality of Work". And an allocation of either O, G, R or U. With each heading having a key. The key for Attendance has: Outstanding ("O") being "Student has attended almost all online lessons". Good ("G") Student has attended the majority of online lessons. "Room for Improvement ("R") Student has missed many online lessons and Unsatisfactory ("U") Student has been attending very few online lessons. These are also colour coded from dark green to red. But I get the impression from DD that this report, at least in respect of attendance, would not have come as a shock to any parents. The definitely take the register in the morning and afternoon, and that is logged on MCAS, as it always was, even though DD is at home not at school. Really surprised. (School is not a private school, although it is a very good comp).

because a small minority cannot have the identical provision

What world do you live in where you think the vast majority of kids live in a house where they not only have their own individual tech set up for live lessons 9-3 but also the internet could cope?

My household is tech heavy but with DH in zoom meetings, me teaching live lessons, we couldn’t have both DS and DD attending live lessons at the same time. And even if we could buy another laptop, I’m still not sure the internet could cope.

DH already had to get a new laptop because his old one kept overheating when in zoom meetings.

Nobody expects the teachers to do the chasing, I don't think. There have been some issues about some teachers not having internet, or robust enough internet, and at least one teacher is now coming into school so she can take her live lessons from there (obviously difficult to do if you have a toddler, hers was some problem with the contract with her internet provider)

I know the school has been lending out laptops and other pieces of equipment, and doing a bunch of complicated work arounds for individuals. At least initially there were appeals around saying if anybody had extra, and asking those who didn't have to get in contact and the school would sort it (I don't know how). I think at least some kids have been going in because they don't have the necessary internet or equipment. Don't know the details.

@BelleSausage

Head of year? Member of the pastoral team? Presumably if a teacher has had no work from a student in 2 weeks or much less than expected they tell someone else at the school?

And, re independence, I think it is a lot to expect that an 11YO who has only had half a year actually in secondary school will have the presence of mind to email their class teacher and say they are concerned about falling behind and ask for help. In this scenario, the girl panicked when she realised she'd missed a bunch of stuff, told her mum who was able to help her out but I don't think the average 11YO is mature enough to share those kinds of concerns with teachers via email (particularly ones they haven't had an opportunity to build much of a rapport with). It would be very common for a kid that age to just panic, stop engaging and drop further behind.

This is the issue in criticising individual school responses. The contact for each school and each cohort is different.

I agree that some schools have not responded well.

But I actually think that some parental expectation has been ridiculous. If your school was not a tech heavy school and had not already rolled out staff laptops and didn’t have a server capable of dealing with increased traffic on VLE portals then it was obviously going to take a while to get up and running.

As for attendance, it is the responsibility of the school to offer the provision. Everyone at my school has been working flat out to do the following task: run key worker provision, write and upload talking Power Point and videos, update the homework portal, update the VLE, teach live lessons, mark work, prepare classrooms for face to face, deliver classroom face to face, deliver food parcels to PP students, calling form memebers, calling PP students, provision for SEND students

This is often plus managing our own childcare issues, bereavements and mental health breakdowns.

Lockdown hasn’t really been easy for anyone. I agree with my head that it would be tone deaf to be chasing up little Susie for her homework when we have no idea what is going on at home.

We have been doing welfare checks and tutor meetings instead.

All marked homework is check off on the homework portal. All parents need to do is check it to see if their child is handing in work. It takes five minutes. There must be some responsibility on the side of the parent and kid too.

I know the school has been lending out laptops

I am fairly sure that the few laptops my school have would be pretty useless for something intensive like a live lesson. Fine for word documents.

Don’t forget the government scheme for providing laptops to disadvantaged Y10s still hasn’t delivered. But screw those Y10s?

@fancymcfancypants

Head of department generally only teach four fewer hours a week than a classroom teacher.

The same goes for heads of year.

You should see the shear volume of parental e-mails at the moment. It is taking my head of year hours and hours to get through them all. And she still have her own classes to teach and her kids to look after too.

I disagree that it is too much for a child to e-mail to ask for help. They need to learn that those who don’t ask don’t get.

I also think it would be incredibly insensitive and unhelpful to be bombarding parents with e-mails about unfinished work at this time. You might want them but I can assure you that many parents do not and get quite cross about them. Which causes another slew of parental complaints.

Presumably if a teacher has had no work from a student in 2 weeks

There also seems to be this expectation on marking which is wildly out of step with what happens in secondary school.

Our marking policy specifies one piece marked every 2-3 weeks. I think in lockdowns this has gone to one piece a fortnight.

But parents see this as barely anything being marked and an outrage.

Every single piece of work has had feedback for our DD, every week. Some have marked each individual slide, others have given general class feedback. I can't even imagine the workload.

@My0My ‘Not providing the best scenario because all children cannot access it is a race to the bottom’
Completely agree with this, and much as it’s nice to all be in it together..it makes little sense for those who can do better.

When teachers here are referencing poor turnouts to live lessons...are these state schools? All the independent schools we know, both from teacher and parent perspective..have fully engaged turn-outs for this, and it’s been by & large a huge success.

Of course independent schools are seeing a totally different lockdown to state schools. FFS.

@noblegiraffe - yes of course it’s a different scenario for both. What I don’t understand, is why there seems to be generally poor take-up rates for those state schools that have offered some live lessons, compared to independent schools where take-up is generally very high. Particularly when so many state school parents both locally and on here, are complaining that they are not being offered this..does it imply that for a lot of parents, it’s not seen as terribly important? Or is it just that the lack of structured timetable around those lessons is lacking, and therefore a lot just don’t bother?

Because independent schools can say ‘you need to buy your kid this laptop and set them up with a desk and quiet space’ and expect the parents to have the resources to do so.
Because independent schools aren’t dealing with kids who are more worried about where the next meal is coming from.
Because independent schools have parents who are paying lots of money and are therefore going to make sure their kids are getting their money’s worth.
Because independent schools who select on academic ability and proven success can expect their kids to be more engaged with their education than kids who are disaffected by years of underperformance.

And because for every state school parent that’s complaining, there are plenty more who don’t want a full timetable of zoom lessons for their kids. I don’t, but because I’m fine with what’s offered, I’m not doing sad face stories everywhere.

Why the 'poor' uptake? Well, 30% of my school's pupils don't have a device to access the lessons on. Another 35-40% are sharing a device with their siblings and/or parents who also need to work. We have given out our school laptops to Y10 pupils, because as noblegiraffe says, the DfE laptop programme hasn't delivered in any way whatsoever! Some of the funding from that scheme is also going to pay for broadband access for those families too. Not all staff in my school have a school-provided device. Again, school machines were given to staff to take home. (I don't have one, but I'm exceptionally fortunate that there is a good, modern machine for every member of my household, and we have fibre broadband, so can all access live video calls at the same time).

In contrast, my son's class (independent) all have sole access to a laptop/computer, and have had live teaching every single day since returning from the Easter holiday.
It comes down to money, doesn't it?

Have the school let you know what is happening in September?

Because if it sounds good that’s what you’ll be moving away from, not the current provision which is not up to a good standard.

Better to compare Sept in this school and that in any new school. You may have exams to move to private?

ds school hasnt done any live lessons. I think most state schools havent. I think this would be a rubbish reason to leave if you were previously happy

I wouldn't worry about the lack of live teaching. My DC are years 7 and 9, only recently have some teams meetings started up and in general my DC view is them as a pretty much wasted slowmoving hour during which they cant get on with the work that's been set. For one of the year9 subjects I think they've been helpful, as a place to ask questions, and that's it.

My Y7 kid can be done by lunchtime many days. BUT I think his school is setting slightky better work than yours seems to. Also mainly the teachers give some feedback, a comment or a grade, which is motivating. In fact it seems we're getting a feel for the different teachers... his geography teacher is dreadful, in the way the work is set and the feedback given. So I think trust your instincts if you are feeling that most of the teachers are not good.

My daughter goes to a grammar school and I've been really impressed with the work that's been set (challenging and creative and broad).

However, no live lessons or video recordings have been done. They said at the beginning of lockdown that they didn't think it actually added any value.

I think because private schools are doing it many parents have a FOMO on behalf of their children.

It’s not a race to the bottom, it’s a practicality thing. Even if state schools had a regular schedule of live lessons, attendance wouldn’t improve that much because a large % of kids can’t access it. It’s not sensible for staff to devote their time to planning and delivering lessons which won’t be accessible. They need to use their time to devise accessible work for everyone (tasks published on a VLE/recorded lessons etc). If they spend all day on zoom lessons for the 30% who can access them, when are they going to get work to the other 70%? Most state class teachers teach about 22/23 hours of lessons a week. Setting good online work and marking work submitted online is quite labour intensive. I have done some live lessons each week, but recorded so kids can access them later and it is nice to check in with the kids and give them a chance to ask questions, but really submitted work and quizzes, with videos seems to work better and the older kids definitely find it more productive than sitting on a zoom lesson with me going “who can have a go at that question? molly? molly... can you hear me Molly...? Oh I think Molly’s sound isn’t working... ok... how about Freddy.... Freddy... sorry we didn’t quite hear that....”

That said, it does sound as if the work provided and contact has been a bit minimal. You need to decide if the school has been good enough in other respects. Managing pandemics is, fingers crossed, not going to be the main thing you need from the school for the next 6 years.