DfE set up online school

[noblegiraffe]

Anyone seen this? I saw this screenshot on twitter but haven’t been able to find the actual story.

How will that help families who are already struggling with helping their children and lack of online resources? Isn't this what many schools are already providing? And if schools are not providing sufficient help, shouldn't guidelines be given to the schools not set up a separate online school?

Doesn’t it make sense to set up a central online school (not zoom, but videos, worksheets etc) made by really decent teachers than try to harangue schools who maybe don’t have the resources or facilities into doing a bodge job? With teachers who may be in school for keyworker kids, or off ill?

Think it's a great idea - I have spent so much time in the past few weeks with various IT glitches, assignments in shared drives that didn't work, links that didn't work.

If they are setting up resources that schools could utilise that would be a good idea, but if parents are struggling to access or work with their children then not sure how this will help.

If it is just another resource that parents can access, I am not sure whether it will hit the target market. There are many parents on here who already feel overwhelmed with everything that is being thrown at them.

They’ve not said ‘resources’ though, they’ve said ‘online school’ which implies something a bit more structured and organised.

@noblegiraffe- Oh I see the difference. .

How will that work with differentiation, knowing your class, etc?

If it is real - and I can find no evidence online - I think it will be specifically useful in the 'twilight zone', when schools are gradually re-opening (so normal school staff are no longer available to organise online learning for their pupils) but not all pupils are back in school full time, or could be used when teaching staff or specific pupils are quarantined after partial re-opening but when COVID cases are identified within the school.

So children who are immunocompromised or have particular conditions that make them vulnerable, or even those classes or groups of children not in school that day would have an 'adequate but not at all personalised' backup that teachers can recommend, while focusing their main teaching and planning effort on in-school teaching.

Ah I have found the story that the screenshot comes from www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8212161/Ex-Bank-England-boss-Lord-King-says-Government-reopen-schools-businesses.html It’s a blue box to the side rather than part of the main story.

It’s a bit weird that the DfE is setting up a secret online school.

It’s a bit weird that the DfE is setting up a secret online school.

NOTHING will surprise me any more....

Is this not just the daily fail making a drama out of the BBC offering due to land next week?

I really wish the BBC would put out some info about the topics they plan to cover so I could start to build stuff around it for my class. As it is, my HT has said we can’t plan to use it as it’s too much of an unknown.

But we know the BBC is kicking off next week, this is something opening ‘within weeks’.

I thought that the government had asked the public broadcaster to set up an educational programme to teach the nation.

It seems that the BBC took it upon itself to teach the nation and the DfE are doing their own thing?

Nice to think they might be doing something in the background though as they certainly aren’t doing anything in the foreground.

Agree about the frustrating lack of advance info meaning teachers can’t incorporate it into their planning. It would have been really useful to know over Easter!

Yes I was wondering when the BBC are going to put something out about their offer....we need to know before Monday

Can anyone corroborate this??

How is it going to help the thousands of parents trying to home educate children (of different ages) while also trying to work from home.

I'd quite like my dc school to stop sending stuff. It just makes me feel worse and worse at how little we are able to do.

Everytime an email comes I wonder what new totally unrealistic challenge it is to try ad do with a 7 and 10 year old inbetween my work meetings and calls.

My understanding about the BBC thing is that it is going to be a load of annoying 'famous' people (ie YouTube influencers) fronting rehashed educational content.

We are probably doing that *breathless8 because we keep manically (over) reacting to the MN threads telling us all we are just sitting on our arses.

Sorry : bold fail!

Doesn’t it make sense to set up a central online school (not zoom, but videos, worksheets etc) made by really decent teachers than try to harangue schools who maybe don’t have the resources or facilities into doing a bodge job? With teachers who may be in school for keyworker kids, or off ill?

I've been saying this for years. It was the height of stupidity for individual teachers and schools to be creating their own worksheets and using a myriad of different online resources, some good, some bad. What a waste of time for all concerned, not to mention the risk of poor material being used. I despaired at our son's school when I looked at the "show my homework" app and saw the different Maths teachers had put up their own worksheets for each different GCSE class at the start of year 10 (for intro to trig topic). Then different teachers using different online text books - each having to be paid for!

There should be a centralised "hub" of approved resources and I hope that the Covid situation makes that happen.

My son wasted a lot of time on piss-poor online resources, some would cause him to waste huge amounts of time by forcing you to retake an entire section of questions when only 1 was wrong. That's time he could have spent doing something else. When I mentioned it at a parents evening, the teacher didn't even realise it worked like that - she hadn't actually worked through it herself - just glibly told her class to do it.

Let's hope it's not the BBC as their online "bytesize" website is pathetically awful. Maybe just about adequate for infants, but completely unsuitable for secondary school.

Immune compromised children and children from homes from immune compromised/high risk adults won't be going back to school until there's a vaccine, so that could be a year away. They NEED an online home-schooling system as they'll be too far behind if they have to rely on occasional teacher webcam sessions or worksheets etc.

The only alternative is to take a full school year out and go back a year, but it won't be until September 2021 they go back to do that, which is 18 months lost teaching. No way will "immune suppressed" children (or children from such homes) be going back to school this September.

going to be a load of annoying 'famous' people

Someone I follow on twitter who is very much a good maths teacher and probably doesn’t have Instagram is involved with the BBC offering so I’m quite intrigued.

The BBC say they will be sharing the schedules a week in advance through their mailing list and on social media. Although they’re already late for the first week...!

Sign up to the mailing list here: bbcteach.edcowebsites.co.uk/

Bitesize is actually already quite good for GCSE English Lit : they might just rehash it with Stacey Dooley enthusing at either end.

But it's good for revision rather than teaching and that's the challenge.