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.

www.thenational.academy/

It says it’s by teachers for teachers, so to support not as a complete package.

As I said, thin end of the wedge - it’s a worrying precedent

the nation's best teachers

than nation's most exhibitionist Teach First acolytes who can also use computer technology competently

Fixed it for them.

I can see some things worth consideration in the idea of 'nationally approved' core lessons- leaving teachers more time to give quality support to outliers and enrich the curriculum for all.

nation's most exhibitionist Teach First acolytes who can also use computer technology competently

Haha!

Say what? Teaching all these different topics to Y5 in week 1? I'm starting to wonder if I've been doing it wrong trying to teach for progression??

The guy who set it up has written a blog post outlining all the issues with it in anticipation of complaints. It was put together over the Easter holidays. It’s not perfect. They’re working to improve it.

davidthomasblog.com/2020/04/whats-wrong-with-oak-national-academy/

Fair dos, eh? They've got up and done something, which is good.

I at them teaching foundation stage about Henry VIII and then realised they meant foundation subject

Teaching all these different topics to Y5 in week 1?

It's fine for English : we have one whole week to do setting... yawn.

Well, it's a start I guess.

I did get the impression though that when planning the Oak Academy stuff, they looked at the National Curriculum and said 'Nah. Too boring. Let's move stuff about.'

Lots of quite random objectives from different year groups....Space in Y2 anyone??

It's fine for English : we have one whole week to do setting... yawn.

Back in my teaching days (before I saw the light) we'd have Friday - read a story, discuss it at home over the weekend which the parents loved, Monday write a retelling of the story. Tuesday make one, two or three changes depending on ability group, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday edit it to improve it. It was enough to drive me to the bring of insanity let alone the children.

I think what might have happened there, theluckiest is that a lot of the teachers being from academy chains they don’t have to follow the NC.

For the moment, I don’t see the history in ks2 being used by maintained schools. The topics don’t match the NC at all. For history I’m not sure how much that actually matters for a lot of schools. The primary science curriculum is spiral and might be an issue later on.

I've just come across this, hadn't picked up on it previously.

What the fuckity fuck? Why were the bbc doing stuff if this was being sorted out? Or does it cross reference it?

Seriously, there's fucking overload now.

I wouldn't do maths like that personally. It's bitty and they don't get the chance to consolidate.

Sonwe have 2 completely separate inputs AND schools work they're emailing?!

Why were the bbc doing stuff if this was being sorted out?

Because, for some unknown reason, the DfE kept this top secret. Look at this thread! No one knew!

squashed this website is supposedly for teachers to reduce their workload so they are expecting teachers to set it for kids.

Given that it opens tomorrow that gives teachers precisely zero hours in which to review it, so I can’t imagine many will be setting it this week.

At what point did the DfE know about it?

I get the impression from Twitter that it wasn’t so much a case of the DfE setting this up more being asked for some money to cover some of the costs.

We've been given this half terms work so bit late for my kid's teachers! Similarly with the bitesize ....

It might have reduced our workload if we had known about it 2 weeks ago so hadn't had to spend the Easter holidays,when not on childcare duties, rewriting a half terms worth of planning to enable the children to learn at home.

In fairness I don’t think the people doing it knew about it 2 weeks ago.

I get the impression from Twitter that it wasn’t so much a case of the DfE setting this up more being asked for some money to cover some of the costs.

So just like everything else in education these days, some people decided to self appoint themselves as experts and make some cash out of this and the DFE gladly accepted, pretending it was their idea all along?

Which fucking figures tbh.

Yes, it's all descended into a bunfight on Twitter. Education is very cliquey at the moment. I am grateful to anyone doing anything but it does appear as if the EduTwitter head prefects (all of whom favour a particular teaching approach) got together to put stuff together. The Old Boy network in teaching has actively resurfaced recently but on a more national scale, whereas it used to be a local thing in LEAs.

I will be interested to see what the English stuff is like, definitely. It might be brilliant. I think calling the platform itself an 'academy' speaks volumes.

The BBC are doing it neuro because its part of their public service charter.