School letter about return

[Piixxiiee]

Just received an email from my childrens school. Basically says they have to open but very phased starting with nursery only then r then y2,then y6. No other years. Not full days, staggered starts/finishes.
No teaching, no marking, no feedback. Children will be given same work as sent home. Also adds social distancing isn't possible so we cannot guarantee safety of your child on the premises!
Very well written letter. I'm pleased.

I'm not always sure on these threads if posters from other countries realise quite how physically crammed a lot of UK classrooms are, how little outdoor space there is and how few washbasins (for a developed country). Obviously there are exceptions but cancelling 'Schools for the future', deleting 90% of the capital budget, clapped out Victorian infrastructure and crappy design and build has a lot to answer for. I also suspect we have got much higher percentages of students arriving on public transport than comparable countries.

Why no marking?

Because live marking is the most effective form of marking, especially for very young children as they can’t read the feedback necessary from the teacher. But it involves being close to the child and within 1 metre, leaning over them.

The virus can live on paper for 24 hours and besides many schools are moving away from excessive ticking and lengthy comments because neither impacts progress but takes huge amounts of time.

No marking for the same reason we’re doing contactless payments

But could some work not be done on chromebooks?

A blanket no marking, no feedback etc just seems excessive.

How many chromebooks do you think that the average primary school has? We just about have enough for the KS2 key worker children.

Teachers are essentially being childcare, highly risky childcare, and will still be setting work for those at home.

Well I work in a school and my head expects me back next week. Except my child isn't those year groups and the school they attend won't accept any new key worker children as they have no space. I'm not taking my child to work to sit in a corner all day - it would destroy their mental health.

So whilst it's great they want kids back in school, lots of teachers cannot access childcare themselves in order to go back.

I have no solutions to the problem.

Our school has less than one working laptop per 30 children so no they can’t use chrome books!

They can't be setting work for pupils at home and being in school. There aren't enough hours in the day. If the same work can be used for both (might happen for year 6? But not year 1) then possibly, or if a staff member was only in for a few hours - but that's not the plan is it.

Y2?

@Whynotnowbaby Did you work in a private school in the UK? It’s completely unethical to deliver a curriculum to children when such a high percentage wouldn’t be able to access it due to family circumstances or poverty etc .

So basically no education at all can be provided. No marking, no feedback.

Right.

So it would be completely impossible to mark a classes work and say.... Wash your hands after?

Fuck. Me. Such defeatist attitudes

If we are not to minimise contact we may as well have everyone back in, go to restaurants etc and shop how we like - just wash our hands afterwards.

Nothing is 100% safe, but a staged re-entry, using the extra space left by the classes that are still out and their teachers to accommodate the children at a greater distance from one another, staggered break, start and end times, and very frequent hand washing (as well as staff staying apart from each other) means the risks can be mitigated

Not safe at all then.

Not safe and not educational or enjoyable for the kids.

I think HTs being assumed to be discouraging are actually trying to manage expectations and pre earn you that they cannot ensure your children will be safe or that their physical, emotional or educational needs will be met. They are being honest. If you’re happy to send your children into an environment like that go ahead.

Yes, I could mark a set of books - potentially spreading the virus from one child to 15. Then I would have to walk to the other side of the school, down a flight of stairs and through 6 doors in order to reach a sink with hot water, where I could wash my hands.

Oh and I would also need to do this throughout the day. 2 staff sinks. Sink in the classroom doesn't have hot water.

I work in an independent school and I still have to use 4 doors, a flight of stairs and an outside stroll to access my nearest sink with soap and hot water.
God knows how difficult it is in most state schools.

Sauvignon no, a large state school and neither did I say that what we did was the only way to cover the curriculum. The point is that we expected to do so. The school I work is now is now private either. We lent chrome books or iPads to the (very small) number of children who had no access to any sort of device (and most had at least a mobile phone which was adequate for the online teaching). We prepared bags of resources which were picked up by parents on the Friday before we locked down on the Monday and made sure each of the lessons were tailored to the resources we had given or accessible without additional material. It required a lot of preparation and we are all glad to be back in school when we got there but it meant we didn’t lose the six weeks we were off. I am sure my previous school could have resources a move to online too, pretty much everyone had a mobile phone which they were very competent in using and we had at least three class sets of laptops which could have been sent home for those who genuinely needed them.

I do not think for two seconds you were able to collate curriculum spec work that could be taught without additional materials, whilst still continuing to teach! It’s impossible .
To expect any child to work from a mobile phone and think it is ideal is ludicrous!
You must have worked in a state school within an affluent area .
What you’re saying is completely unrealistic , but keep living in dream world.

@Greysparkles How does it work in secondary school?
Multiple children...

Those who are adamant that schools commence need to wise up and realise they are putting their children at an educational deficit! Making teachers child mind.

We have had nothing marked, one phone call from a member of staff who has never taught my child. Just weekly lists of things to do with no feedback mechanism to even say weve looked at the list, let alone done any if it.

Thats more than we have had!!

Sauvignon we were able to do it because we knew there was likely to be a lockdown- we just didn’t know when. So we just made sure we went through our SoWs and got the resources ready, one person took each year group. It wasn’t perfect and there were things that got forgotten and had to be shown on a screen when a handout would have worked better - no one is suggesting this was better than school - but we managed.

The mobile phone thing is also not the best way but again it worked. A lot of the lessons were more about listening than seeing and the phone worked as well as the next device for that, they could also see clearly enough to identify which resource was needed and find it. We all got better at it as time went on and it is really interesting that now we’re back in school we have had parents asking if their children can “dial in” to lessons online if they are ill (for example we have a child with frequent absences due to long term illness but he is well enough to work from home) so we often have a laptop open in class for a student at home to join in.

I know it is hard in the U.K. and different schools have different barriers but I think there are a minority of schools that have defaulted to a “nothing is possible” stance.

Lessons were about listening? I trained a long time ago but I thought lessons were about learning and differentiated learning activities not teachers talking at kids. If by providing work you mean giving them stuff to read and listen to without differentiation then yeah I guess you might have banged something together after school on Thursday

A lot of the lessons were more about listening This is absolutely inadequate and completely inaccessible to most learners; your sanctimonious epistle about how easy and straightforward it was preparing to children to go off is falling apart at the seams.

so we often have a laptop open in class for a student at home to join in

Really, really? On what planet is this in keeping with Child Protection? Do you stay in one spot when teaching? Is it again just via a listening in position?

You my dear are talking utter nonsense.

Listening was the wrong word- what I meant is that lessons were discussion based rather than “read these notes on this PowerPoint”. We used classroom to group them after the initial input and joined each group in turn to work with them. I’m not going to explain the logistics in too much depth as it is obvious that this is something no one in the U.K. could possibly countenance doing but it worked for us!

Regarding safeguarding- I will admit that I am totally baffled by the Byzantine rules around that in the U.K. but on this same planet, just another country, it is fine to have a child joining in remotely, listening in facing the whiteboard during teacher led portions and joining in with the small group discussions, games or activities. I struggle to see how anyone is at risk, the children in class are supervised all the time and an extra child at home is able to join in with the learning that would otherwise be sent to them as an emailed pack of worksheets which probably don’t cover the whole content of the classwork and would be falling behind their peers.