Hi all,
I am very curious about whether other children are getting any virtual on line classes from their own schools ?
My daughter in year 6 is just doing her own thing roughly following topics that she would be covering at school . She is a self starter and is very happy using different on line resources but she has no work set by her school. Academically she is fine and looking forward to starting secondary school in September .So I really am not worried about her . It would just be great to have even one or two on line classes per week with her teacher to stay in contact and be engaged .
My son I am more worried about he is in year 8 at a grammar school . He gets home work via the show my home work app and sends it back on line . He gets the odd comment back but mainly a thumbs up or a smiley face . He is beginning to get demotivated especially with the lack of contact with his teachers. How difficult would it to have a virtual class per subject per week ? Are my expectations too high ? I know these are strange times we are in but there seems to be a vast difference in teaching provision .
The local secondary school is doing virtual classes and all of the private schools that I know of .
A few weeks ago his school sent an email that they didn’t want to pressurise teachers to use some thing they weren’t comfortable with ......
I have mentioned it to his head of year but apparently it’s just up to the individual teacher .
Unfortunately none of his have gone with it .
Any thoughts ? Are there any teachers who can shed some light ?

Stay, safe and well .

At DD’s school, they have decided against it and I can see why. The Head had this to say about why it was ‘inappropriate’ for them:

‘The essential fact is that the current workload and commitment expected of my staff is such that an expectation of delivering live streamed lessons on top of this would be impossible for them to implement. Aside from the safeguarding and technological challenges that would need to be resolved, I have a significant number of colleagues who are trying to manage their own children’s home learning and a fair number who have been personally affected through their own illness or illness affecting their loved ones. On top of all of this, with over 200 A Level candidates and over 200 GCSE candidates who need their grades forensically and fairly assessed and submitted by each individual teacher, there is a huge additional work load pressure on them that is not faced by teachers in much smaller schools.’

There is also the very real problem of a high number of families not having access to good enough (or at all) IT/wifi to support it - there are families with more than one child and only one device so there is no guarantee a particular child can get online at a particular time.

If you are worried about him getting demotivated then you could contact the pastoral head? Our school is running fortnightly well being surveys and contact any student who needs it - they are sending out a huge amount of mental health support, alongside academic work, and the head does a letter each day to the entire school community.

Would the BBC Bitesize daily lessons, or the Oak Academy ones be helpful? No guarantee they match up with what your son is being set by school but they might at least be something a bit different.

DS2's HT may be one of my favourite people on this planet, but even I am quite happy that he hasn't decided to bless us with any more than the occasional missive (and I'm assuming that we would have heard about it long and loud from DS2, if the students were getting much more than we are . So far, his main moan seems to have been about a couple of conflicting messages about how some of his work should be submitted).

The school still does AS levels, so those who teach the sixth form have formal assessments for both year 13 and year 12 to work on and, like KS10's DD's HT, I would agree that this (and, obviously, the GCSE grading) needs to be a priority.

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Our grammars are not doing online lessons.
We have had similar emails from the heads to the ones above.
My DD in year 11 has been sent a great A level bridging programme but no work needs submitting.

Our GS is setting 5 home learning tasks per day in line with their normal timetable. They are also setting homeworks. My children are spending a lot of time doing the tasks and I've made them some daily learning log sheets to fill in so I can check them every day when I get back from work and so they have a record. Some work is online questions, some is watching links and writing pieces in their books which they then scan or submit a photo, some is work from text books and they even have food tech to do. One of them has had a homework letter for not fully completing some of his maths so I'm going to go through that with him this weekend so they're up to date for Monday.
They are definately keeping them busy!

DD in year 12 has about 2 online lessons a week. She loves them but admits they are not especially productive.
Ds in year 10 at the same school has only had one online lesson in total - the school has concerns about video contact with under 16s (or at least that's what the children understand).
They are getting quite good feedback from teachers but I suspect schools might be focusing more on those two year groups.

Interesting.

Lochinver, the local 13 plus prep, just a hop, skip and a jump away, are offering daily live lessons at 9am , 11am and 2pm for 30 mins for all students from Reception to Y8 using Microsoft Teams as are all other private schools I know of.

I am shocked to hear that there is nothing for Y10 and hardly anything for Y12.

Can they really afford to lose an entire term out of the five terms available for GCSE and A level preparation?

SW Herts, QE, Mill Hill County and HBS registration have already opened and DAO opens in two weeks time so plans for the 11 plus are in full swing. DG

I suspect that loobylou meant they had only had one or two online lessons with everything else being delivered via set work (probably using Show My Homework or something similar.)

Private schools seem far more cavalier about the safeguarding issues of online lessons, and have the expectation that every child will have multiple top of the range devices to allow them to access online lessons all day everyday - state schools don’t have that luxury, and are generally having to be more creative to ensure nobody is discriminated against.