For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
I think that would be reasonable IF the quid pro quo was that we were not expected to spend as much time as we currently do remote teaching, perhaps by having a longer Easter holiday? Alternatively is what you want the socialisation part of school? In which case having the equivalent of a summer camp might be an idea? That could be staffed in a very different way to normal school.
I agree. Teachers should take 2 weeks out of their summer to make up for lost time and ensure all children leave this academic year with a full working knowledge of Karl Marx.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
Once I've had a vaccine, I'm not going to worry too much about mutant strains. The biggest problem for most healthy/youngish people (We'll be getting the vaccines last) is that the basic virus is a novel one. Getting any of the vaccines is ~ functionally equivalent to having had the virus (Or slightly better if anything) which to my mind should reduce a mutant infection to something like the flu; patterns of mild and moderate illness in unlucky mutant hosts seem to suggest that. My immune system should well be able to handle it.
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
I think that would be reasonable IF the quid pro quo was that we were not expected to spend as much time as we currently do remote teaching, perhaps by having a longer Easter holiday? Alternatively is what you want the socialisation part of school? In which case having the equivalent of a summer camp might be an idea? That could be staffed in a very different way to normal school.
I agree that sounds like a very sensible route, the summer school. But I think it is also beholden upon teachers in this of all years to understand that there may be some sacrifices.
I have never been one of the "teachers have so many holidays" types because a) I have no idea if they are spending every waking hour preparing lesson plans; and b) if they do have more time off then that is one of the attributes of teaching.
I agree. Teachers should take 2 weeks out of their summer to make up for lost time and ensure all children leave this academic year with a full working knowledge of Karl Marx.
That'll cover the first 2 minutes. What about the rest of the time?
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
Education normally works on one or two year timescales. Trying to change things radically in the middle of the year never ends well.
I agree. Teachers should take 2 weeks out of their summer to make up for lost time and ensure all children leave this academic year with a full working knowledge of Karl Marx.
That'll cover the first 2 minutes. What about the rest of the time?
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps. ....
Hmm, bit of a reinterpretation of history there. I seem to recall that one of the promised benefits of Brexit was precisely that we were supposedly going to be able to do our own deal with the slave-labour providers:
Smaller countries, like Iceland and Switzerland, which are outside the EU and don’t have to deal with all of its bureaucratic problems, have been able to strike free trade agreements with China. If we Vote Leave and take back control, we will gain the power to strike our own trade deals, creating new business opportunities and creating more jobs. (from the Vote Leave website).
I agree. Teachers should take 2 weeks out of their summer to make up for lost time and ensure all children leave this academic year with a full working knowledge of Karl Marx.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
Most parents I know who have had children at home and are also working have seriously struggled to do either item well.
And it's mainly the mums who have been trying to both look after children / teach them and work at the same time.
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
Well, we’re not. We might have been before Christmas, but some criminals, ooops, the DfE stopped us.
I’m disturbed that Richard Nabavi thinks ‘contracts can be overridden by the government.’ Sure. They could impose new contracts by diktat. And we can then refuse to sign them and you will have no teachers at all. Plus nobody will ever sign a contract with the British government again.
This comes back to the idea that lockdown is ‘time off.’ Well it isn’t. I have been teaching in school and out since the 4th January. If you want teaching to go on through Easter we should have stopped setting remote learning. If you say that’s ‘time lost’ maybe we should anyway.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Then have them play educational-type games, or charades or do a play or music or sport or....
I would have thought the issue is with the socialisation of children as much as their education.
In this year no one I'm sure is going to hold them to every letter of the curriculum.
OFSTED still are.
And would you believe it, the useless pillocks are STILL doing inspections, amazingly, including onsite inspections?
Can any defender of OFSTED - I know we have a few on here - defend that?
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Oh, I agree absolutely about the notice. That was my point, really: for months we should have been putting plans in place to make up for some of the lost school time once it is possible to do so, but AFAIK there has been nothing done on this and no discussion of it.
Because that requires forward thinking - and this government only does something when there is only a single choice left on to pick from.
All this could have been thought about back in July August last year - it was obvious that lockdowns might be required and that exams were likely not to be possible but rather than planning for the possibility nothing was done until things were inevitable.
I agree. Teachers should take 2 weeks out of their summer to make up for lost time and ensure all children leave this academic year with a full working knowledge of Karl Marx.
Excellent. His thesis offering a syncrisis of two ancient philosophical materialists (Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie) deserves to be better known.
I agree. Teachers should take 2 weeks out of their summer to make up for lost time and ensure all children leave this academic year with a full working knowledge of Karl Marx.
That'll cover the first 2 minutes. What about the rest of the time?
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
Most parents I know who have had children at home and are also working have seriously struggled to do either item well.
And it's mainly the mums who have been trying to both look after children / teach them and work at the same time.
Absolutely. But the way the post was phrased was that it would be impossible without preparation, planning, logistics, etc. I am saying that that sounds unlikely.
You have a group of children at a certain level who, it seems and certainly in the state system, have been left high and dry.
Just get them into school, put a teacher in front of them and let the teacher do what teachers do. Go over old stuff? Go over stuff that should have been taught at home? Have fun with numbers/prose/continents/kings? All of that.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
On topic, a good article Philip though I disagree with the premise and all of the later posts from others about the EU falling apart. I find that to be a very unlikely scenario, even with all of the internal contradictions there is just to much political capital invested by Paris, Berlin and other capital cities across Europe in the concept of the EU. There's just no way the politicians will allow it to fail and they'll use all of the undemocratic means available to keep it going. France votes down the constitution? No worries, we'll just rebrand it as something else and not allow a vote. Britain votes to leave? No worries let's just pretend that they haven't actually left and ignore any successes they have outside of the EU structures.
There's simply no appetite for admitting that the whole political establishment of Europe has been making such poor decisions for so many years.
What's going to happen without the UK is that you'll get France pushing its own foreign policy agenda without any other major foreign policy power to provide a counterweight and Germany will pursue it's mercantilist trade and economic policies without abandon and the EU will turn into a completely parochial organisation selling itself out to the worst regimes for an extra 0.1% worth of GDP because nothing other than more GDP matters to Germany.
If anything the idea of having no internal competitors for foreign and economic policy within the EU will massively appeal to Paris and Berlin. They both get what they want out of the EU, France projects its power and Germany gets to remake the EU in its image and continues to hollow out Southern Europe with no dissent. For that reason the amount of political capital invested to keep the bandwagon going will continue to rise and it will result in the EU as an organisation limping on from crisis to crisis with no real reform and no real democratic legitimacy.
Buried within this analysis is clear example of what Britain has “lost”.
It can no longer influence Europe-wide* foreign policy, and has surrendered that position uncontested to France.
As you say, Germany will be happy with this arrangement is long as countries are forced to buy German defence equipment every so often.
*As opposed to EU, as I believe EU foreign policy to be largely fictional.
As you point out there's nothing of value lost there and if anything it's leading to a diminished EU with their dodgy China deals and sucking off Putin in Moscow.
Our interests are better served with unilateral action or joining up with the US, Canada and Australia.
Not having the UK makes the EU much less relevant to the rest of the world, for me that's actually a big victory. No longer lending them our diplomatic weight is a definite brexit upside that I was looking forwards to.
I am not saying there is nothing of value to be lost there.
Far from it.
In our very own neighbourhood we face an ongoing Russian threat, as well as ongoing issues related to state insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa.
We also aspire (or should) to promote liberal democracy and the freest trade, especially in Europe which remains 50%+ of our trade and will likely remain close to that level for a generation yet.
It is very much in our interests to promote and influence our view on these matters in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and the Med.
It is also useful to have an voice with the pivotal European powers, France and Germany.
We have torn that all up, and our voice is now much diminished.
We are also less interesting to other powers because we can no longer even pretend to influence the rest of Europe.
PS Political and defence partnerships with other Anglo nations were never actually prevented by EU membership. See, for example, the Five Powers Agreement.
I think giving the EU enough rope is something I can live with and something that a lot of leave voters predicted would happen without our influence inside the EU.
Outside of the EU we're already making huge strides in our own policy and we're focusing eastwards, it's already changing how nations are seeing us and how they want to partner with us. Japan, Canada and Australia have all separately asked us to join the CPTPP, Japan has invited us to join military exercises in the Pacific reviving a century old alliance and the US is making noises about the UK joining he quad to make it a pent and also eyeing up the CPTPP.
Our global influence was never enhanced by being in the EU, it was diminished. The EU saw its influence enhanced by having us in it and now you can see without us their desperation to do grubby deals with China and Russia has already lost them a lot of friends and it's driving the Biden administration towards Brexit Britain with open arms.
These are unwelcome truths for you, I realise that. The EU without the UK is going to have a different outlook and the UK out of the EU will capitalise on that. The process has already started and it will continue to see us diverge from the EU in our foreign policy terms and over time in terms of trade, that 45% export value that the EU currently has will fall as the nation starts facing eastwards. The UK-EU relationship will continue to go down in value for both sides and we will have a simple trading relationship with the EU. As it should always have been.
None of this really stacks up.
How is greater defence activity in Asia going to help us? Of course we are welcomed, we have materiel to spare. It will cost us, though. For what?
Over 50% of our trade is with the EU and/or EFTA nations.
Defence policy should be based on our own national interests which follow our geography and trade realities.
We’ve said goodbye to the ability to influence our own neighbourhood!
The EU-China deals shows starkly that we are now out of that conversation.
Greater defence activity in Asia will help us because the world is a global interconnected place and that is where our enemies/threats are.
The world does not end in our own neighbourhood and we have little need, desire or interest to influence our own neighbourhood. We do need to protect ourselves from threats wherever in the world they are though.
Truly pathetic, meaningless answer.
Someone posted on ongoing Russian hacking attempts earlier.
Our key threat - geopolitically - is next door.
In extremis, even an attempted invasion of Taiwan by China doesn’t really impact us one bit.
Computer chips imported to UK?
Something we could re-shore and indeed I believe there is a general view in the US (if not U.K.) to reducing reliance on Taiwanese chips.
I am all for reshoring key manufacturing, but pulling manufacturing jobs from Taiwan in the face of Chinese aggression seems very wrong to me.
I agree. Teachers should take 2 weeks out of their summer to make up for lost time and ensure all children leave this academic year with a full working knowledge of Karl Marx.
Many of them already do, to run summer schools. That certainly is one change that came with league tables.
I’m very struck at times by how middle class this board is. Or the DfE, for the matter of that.
I agree. Teachers should take 2 weeks out of their summer to make up for lost time and ensure all children leave this academic year with a full working knowledge of Karl Marx.
Many of them already do, to run summer schools. That certainly is one change that came with league tables.
I’m very struck at times by how middle class this board is. Or the DfE, for the matter of that.
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
I think that would be reasonable IF the quid pro quo was that we were not expected to spend as much time as we currently do remote teaching, perhaps by having a longer Easter holiday? Alternatively is what you want the socialisation part of school? In which case having the equivalent of a summer camp might be an idea? That could be staffed in a very different way to normal school.
I agree that sounds like a very sensible route, the summer school. But I think it is also beholden upon teachers in this of all years to understand that there may be some sacrifices.
I have never been one of the "teachers have so many holidays" types because a) I have no idea if they are spending every waking hour preparing lesson plans; and b) if they do have more time off then that is one of the attributes of teaching.
But this year is different.
We do get longer holidays, yes. It is one of the perks of teaching. It is such a good perk that the average teacher lasts five years before deciding they would rather do something else.
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
Well, we’re not. We might have been before Christmas, but some criminals, ooops, the DfE stopped us.
I’m disturbed that Richard Nabavi thinks ‘contracts can be overridden by the government.’ Sure. They could impose new contracts by diktat. And we can then refuse to sign them and you will have no teachers at all. Plus nobody will ever sign a contract with the British government again.
This comes back to the idea that lockdown is ‘time off.’ Well it isn’t. I have been teaching in school and out since the 4th January. If you want teaching to go on through Easter we should have stopped setting remote learning. If you say that’s ‘time lost’ maybe we should anyway.
Lockdown hasn't been time off for teachers. But lockdown has occurred because of a global pandemic which has meant a huge amount of a child's life (5-20% depending on age) and a significant amount of their education has been near-catastrophically interrupted.
Extra miles are needed.
But knock yourself out with refusing to sign contracts with the dreaded/cursed DfE.
I agree. Teachers should take 2 weeks out of their summer to make up for lost time and ensure all children leave this academic year with a full working knowledge of Karl Marx.
Excellent. His thesis offering a syncrisis of two ancient philosophical materialists (Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie) deserves to be better known.
I think you need to spend some quality time with Dan Brown.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
Mine’s a mixture:
Live lessons Resources with audio explanations Videos (takes a bloody age to edit them) Research tasks.
I don’t think there’s a single student who has sent me a single piece of work over the last six weeks that hasn’t had a personal voice note left for them to say what they can do and how to improve.
Which is especially hard work as I usually find, when marking, that I need soothing music on to concentrate - not really possible when marking verbally.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
It's confusing the right to speak with the right to an audience. Many have got used to having the latter and are not best pleased - are in many cases downright livid - at seeing this privilege eroded.
I must have missed the part of the regulations in which students will be herded into the lecture halls and held there by force. No one will will be compelled to turn up to listen, but no one will have the right to prevent another from exercising their lawful freedom of speech either. That's life in a free society, and by God it's about time action was taken to preserve it.
In a free society people should be able to decide who they invite to speak to them without the authorities intervening to correct what are deemed bad choices. This is how I look at it.
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
I think that would be reasonable IF the quid pro quo was that we were not expected to spend as much time as we currently do remote teaching, perhaps by having a longer Easter holiday? Alternatively is what you want the socialisation part of school? In which case having the equivalent of a summer camp might be an idea? That could be staffed in a very different way to normal school.
I agree that sounds like a very sensible route, the summer school. But I think it is also beholden upon teachers in this of all years to understand that there may be some sacrifices.
I have never been one of the "teachers have so many holidays" types because a) I have no idea if they are spending every waking hour preparing lesson plans; and b) if they do have more time off then that is one of the attributes of teaching.
But this year is different.
And whilst some people have been furloughed or made redundant (like me) other including my wife public sector and my old team (private sector - those left) have had huge amounts of extra work without any additional pay or leave.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps. ....
Hmm, bit of a reinterpretation of history there. I seem to recall that one of the promised benefits of Brexit was precisely that we were supposedly going to be able to do our own deal with the slave-labour providers:
Smaller countries, like Iceland and Switzerland, which are outside the EU and don’t have to deal with all of its bureaucratic problems, have been able to strike free trade agreements with China. If we Vote Leave and take back control, we will gain the power to strike our own trade deals, creating new business opportunities and creating more jobs. (from the Vote Leave website).
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
I think that would be reasonable IF the quid pro quo was that we were not expected to spend as much time as we currently do remote teaching, perhaps by having a longer Easter holiday? Alternatively is what you want the socialisation part of school? In which case having the equivalent of a summer camp might be an idea? That could be staffed in a very different way to normal school.
I agree that sounds like a very sensible route, the summer school. But I think it is also beholden upon teachers in this of all years to understand that there may be some sacrifices.
I have never been one of the "teachers have so many holidays" types because a) I have no idea if they are spending every waking hour preparing lesson plans; and b) if they do have more time off then that is one of the attributes of teaching.
But this year is different.
We do get longer holidays, yes. It is one of the perks of teaching. It is such a good perk that the average teacher lasts five years before deciding they would rather do something else.
Same as a short service commission in HMF. I started off by saying that teaching is a vocation. If you want to make a ton of money use that physics to design structured products for Goldman Sachs. Plenty do, of course.
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
Well, we’re not. We might have been before Christmas, but some criminals, ooops, the DfE stopped us.
I’m disturbed that Richard Nabavi thinks ‘contracts can be overridden by the government.’ Sure. They could impose new contracts by diktat. And we can then refuse to sign them and you will have no teachers at all. Plus nobody will ever sign a contract with the British government again.
This comes back to the idea that lockdown is ‘time off.’ Well it isn’t. I have been teaching in school and out since the 4th January. If you want teaching to go on through Easter we should have stopped setting remote learning. If you say that’s ‘time lost’ maybe we should anyway.
Lockdown hasn't been time off for teachers. But lockdown has occurred because of a global pandemic which has meant a huge amount of a child's life (5-20% depending on age) and a significant amount of their education has been near-catastrophically interrupted.
Extra miles are needed.
But knock yourself out with refusing to sign contracts with the dreaded/cursed DfE.
OK.
Your employer comes to you and says, Topping, we’ve decided even though you’ve worked all your contracted days and far in excess of your contracted hours, that isn’t enough. We’ve buggered everything up, because we’re stupid. So this year, we’re taking all your holiday entitlement off you as well. If you object, we’ll force you to work. There’s nothing you can do.
What would you do?
If you say you’d roll over and have your tummy tickled, I’ll call you a liar and ask if you work for the DfE.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
Mine’s a mixture:
Live lessons Resources with audio explanations Videos (takes a bloody age to edit them) Research tasks.
I don’t think there’s a single student who has sent me a single piece of work over the last six weeks that hasn’t had a personal voice note left for them to say what they can do and how to improve.
Which is especially hard work as I usually find, when marking, that I need soothing music on to concentrate - not really possible when marking verbally.
And yet, apparently, we’re not working.
I think teachers are doing a fantastic job just coping with the changed circumstances.
My eldest is in yr6 and his teacher was off sick so the other teacher in his year has been teaching almost 60 kids over zoom. She has been amazing.
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
I think that would be reasonable IF the quid pro quo was that we were not expected to spend as much time as we currently do remote teaching, perhaps by having a longer Easter holiday? Alternatively is what you want the socialisation part of school? In which case having the equivalent of a summer camp might be an idea? That could be staffed in a very different way to normal school.
I agree that sounds like a very sensible route, the summer school. But I think it is also beholden upon teachers in this of all years to understand that there may be some sacrifices.
I have never been one of the "teachers have so many holidays" types because a) I have no idea if they are spending every waking hour preparing lesson plans; and b) if they do have more time off then that is one of the attributes of teaching.
But this year is different.
We do get longer holidays, yes. It is one of the perks of teaching. It is such a good perk that the average teacher lasts five years before deciding they would rather do something else.
Same as a short service commission in HMF. I started off by saying that teaching is a vocation. If you want to make a ton of money use that physics to design structured products for Goldman Sachs. Plenty do, of course.
Not many teachers are in it for the money alone: doesn't mean we don't want to get paid, of course.
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
I think that would be reasonable IF the quid pro quo was that we were not expected to spend as much time as we currently do remote teaching, perhaps by having a longer Easter holiday? Alternatively is what you want the socialisation part of school? In which case having the equivalent of a summer camp might be an idea? That could be staffed in a very different way to normal school.
I agree that sounds like a very sensible route, the summer school. But I think it is also beholden upon teachers in this of all years to understand that there may be some sacrifices.
I have never been one of the "teachers have so many holidays" types because a) I have no idea if they are spending every waking hour preparing lesson plans; and b) if they do have more time off then that is one of the attributes of teaching.
But this year is different.
We do get longer holidays, yes. It is one of the perks of teaching. It is such a good perk that the average teacher lasts five years before deciding they would rather do something else.
I don’t think we do get longer holidays than most in the public sector:
A week at Easter. 2 weeks at Christmas and New Year four weeks annual leave Up to 36 days a year flexi (which we of course can’t have)
I make that 14 weeks total, which compares to 13 weeks in the teaching profession.
That’s an awful lot more than the private sector, of course.
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
Well, we’re not. We might have been before Christmas, but some criminals, ooops, the DfE stopped us.
I’m disturbed that Richard Nabavi thinks ‘contracts can be overridden by the government.’ Sure. They could impose new contracts by diktat. And we can then refuse to sign them and you will have no teachers at all. Plus nobody will ever sign a contract with the British government again.
This comes back to the idea that lockdown is ‘time off.’ Well it isn’t. I have been teaching in school and out since the 4th January. If you want teaching to go on through Easter we should have stopped setting remote learning. If you say that’s ‘time lost’ maybe we should anyway.
I think it might very tremendously from school to school, but I haven't noticed any significant reduction in workload during lockdown.
My wife spent last week in the classroom teaching essential workers' children. School H&S dictated all windows and doors left open, which was interesting in the sub zero temperatures.
Except that the governing party will base its election campaign almost entirely around independence and near enough half the population will vote for it. We all know it's true.
'Near enough half' may indeed vote SNP in the election in 2021.
But in any independence vote which may follow, the vote for independence will be less than 50%. Just like last time.
Don't count on it. If independence was as peripheral an issue as this duff poll suggests then they wouldn't keep voting over and over and over again for politicians who care about nothing else.
There needs to be an independent, coherent Unionist party to counter them. I think there will be in a decade or so.
Labour should do it as they have (virtually) nothing to lose. I think I would use the 'Co-operative Party' mantle solely north of the border to underline that it was a real change. 'We do not seek the breakup of the United Kingdom, but we will put Scotland's interests first, only entering coalition with partners if they're prepared to align with and support our vision for Scotland.'
On a point of order, Labour can't use Co-operative Party. That is a separate political party and isn't a plaything for Labour to mess with...
Sorry, didn't spot this before. Could they not all stand as genuine Coop candidates?
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
Mine’s a mixture:
Live lessons Resources with audio explanations Videos (takes a bloody age to edit them) Research tasks.
I don’t think there’s a single student who has sent me a single piece of work over the last six weeks that hasn’t had a personal voice note left for them to say what they can do and how to improve.
Which is especially hard work as I usually find, when marking, that I need soothing music on to concentrate - not really possible when marking verbally.
And yet, apparently, we’re not working.
I think teachers are doing a fantastic job just coping with the changed circumstances.
My eldest is in yr6 and his teacher was off sick so the other teacher in his year has been teaching almost 60 kids over zoom. She has been amazing.
Wow. That must be dammed hard work for her. It’s not the teaching so much - a lesson is a lesson - but the mere thought of the marking load makes me feel ill. Serious respect.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
Toby Young isnt an anti-vaxxer. Hes very much in favour of it as I understand it. Theres a difference between anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown.
Then it's even more disgraceful of him to peddle an antivax conspiracy theory ("Are vaccines killing Gibraltarians?!?!") - and one that's obviously bollocks at that.
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
Well, we’re not. We might have been before Christmas, but some criminals, ooops, the DfE stopped us.
I’m disturbed that Richard Nabavi thinks ‘contracts can be overridden by the government.’ Sure. They could impose new contracts by diktat. And we can then refuse to sign them and you will have no teachers at all. Plus nobody will ever sign a contract with the British government again.
This comes back to the idea that lockdown is ‘time off.’ Well it isn’t. I have been teaching in school and out since the 4th January. If you want teaching to go on through Easter we should have stopped setting remote learning. If you say that’s ‘time lost’ maybe we should anyway.
I think it might very tremendously from school to school, but I haven't noticed any significant reduction in workload during lockdown.
My wife spent last week in the classroom teaching essential workers' children. School H&S dictated all windows and doors left open, which was interesting in the sub zero temperatures.
I think overall my workload is roughly comparable.
But that’s only because I live at distance from my school and so I am saving two hours’ travelling time every day.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps. ....
Hmm, bit of a reinterpretation of history there. I seem to recall that one of the promised benefits of Brexit was precisely that we were supposedly going to be able to do our own deal with the slave-labour providers:
Smaller countries, like Iceland and Switzerland, which are outside the EU and don’t have to deal with all of its bureaucratic problems, have been able to strike free trade agreements with China. If we Vote Leave and take back control, we will gain the power to strike our own trade deals, creating new business opportunities and creating more jobs. (from the Vote Leave website).
That was before they attacked Hong Kong and the Uighurs.
Does that change nothing in your eyes?
Yes, it does to an extent. However, that doesn't alter the point that Leave advocates were dead keen to do deals with China, just as the EU has been, and well after the period where it became obvious that China was becoming more authoritarian and more contemptuous of human rights. After all, the Uighur scandal has been going on since 2014, and became increasingly nasty from 2017. Equally, the Hong Kong repression started a while back.
It is true that the UK (and the US) have been a bit quicker than the EU to recognise the new reality, for which they deserve some credit. But we're still doing plenty of business with China, and accepting investment from Chinese companies which are ultimately controlled by the state. The EU shouldn't have done its deal with China - and indeed, the deal might not be ratified by the European parliament - but I don't think their position is really all that different from the rest of the Western world.
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
No to shortening the summer holidays which many families are pinning their hopes on as six weeks of escape.
What is an ingenious idea is flipping the Easter break so Easter is at the end not the beginning – I hadn't encountered that before and it has real merit.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
Region of Residence 1st dose 2nd dose Cumulative Total Doses to Date Total 219,760 1,854 221,614 East Of England 21,755 349 22,104 London 29,442 216 29,658 Midlands 47,932 143 48,075 North East And Yorkshire 28,409 483 28,892 North West 26,709 156 26,865 South East 39,206 252 39,458 South West 25,061 253 25,314
For the afternoon Mon-Wed Vaccine Number panic, please form an orderly queue. Tea and biscuits will be served.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Oh, I agree absolutely about the notice. That was my point, really: for months we should have been putting plans in place to make up for some of the lost school time once it is possible to do so, but AFAIK there has been nothing done on this and no discussion of it.
There was some discussion about it on this blog at least as long ago as last summer. I don't think anything meaningful was ever going to emerge from an Education department led by Williamson.
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
Well, we’re not. We might have been before Christmas, but some criminals, ooops, the DfE stopped us.
I’m disturbed that Richard Nabavi thinks ‘contracts can be overridden by the government.’ Sure. They could impose new contracts by diktat. And we can then refuse to sign them and you will have no teachers at all. Plus nobody will ever sign a contract with the British government again.
This comes back to the idea that lockdown is ‘time off.’ Well it isn’t. I have been teaching in school and out since the 4th January. If you want teaching to go on through Easter we should have stopped setting remote learning. If you say that’s ‘time lost’ maybe we should anyway.
Lockdown hasn't been time off for teachers. But lockdown has occurred because of a global pandemic which has meant a huge amount of a child's life (5-20% depending on age) and a significant amount of their education has been near-catastrophically interrupted.
Extra miles are needed.
But knock yourself out with refusing to sign contracts with the dreaded/cursed DfE.
OK.
Your employer comes to you and says, Topping, we’ve decided even though you’ve worked all your contracted days and far in excess of your contracted hours, that isn’t enough. We’ve buggered everything up, because we’re stupid. So this year, we’re taking all your holiday entitlement off you as well. If you object, we’ll force you to work. There’s nothing you can do.
What would you do?
If you say you’d roll over and have your tummy tickled, I’ll call you a liar and ask if you work for the DfE.
Now is not the time for sound bites...but you have the future of our country in your hands.
As I said, teaching is a vocation. It is a million miles different from my work today. But it is not so different from my work when I did a vocational job in HMF at which point exactly what you describe happened and often. Not saying that being in HMF is like being a teacher but they are both vocational jobs.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
And my experience is plenty have not.
Why are you moving from anecdotal evidence of poor practice in some schools to saying we should be threatening and bullying teachers as a whole?
Pupils have, on average, six years left at school during which to mitigate the impact of the shutdowns. I’d worry that short term measures such as changing this Easter holiday would allow Ministers to think that the box had been ticked and to neglect the longer term.
A serious effort over several years is needed to repair the damage that allows for different approaches based on age and the degree to which individual children have failed to progress - a minority of pupils learning has actually improved. For example, a discussion is needed whether to run GCSEs in 2022 or whether another year of school assessed grades would benefit current Y10s. Also, should the school performance measures be changed to allow fewer examined subjects and more time on extra-curricular activities.
Going back to the remainder of this academic year - it would kind of help if the DfE let it be known how exactly school assessed grades should be done. It’s six weeks since exams were canned and teachers are still waiting.
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
Well, we’re not. We might have been before Christmas, but some criminals, ooops, the DfE stopped us.
I’m disturbed that Richard Nabavi thinks ‘contracts can be overridden by the government.’ Sure. They could impose new contracts by diktat. And we can then refuse to sign them and you will have no teachers at all. Plus nobody will ever sign a contract with the British government again.
This comes back to the idea that lockdown is ‘time off.’ Well it isn’t. I have been teaching in school and out since the 4th January. If you want teaching to go on through Easter we should have stopped setting remote learning. If you say that’s ‘time lost’ maybe we should anyway.
Lockdown hasn't been time off for teachers. But lockdown has occurred because of a global pandemic which has meant a huge amount of a child's life (5-20% depending on age) and a significant amount of their education has been near-catastrophically interrupted.
Extra miles are needed.
But knock yourself out with refusing to sign contracts with the dreaded/cursed DfE.
OK.
Your employer comes to you and says, Topping, we’ve decided even though you’ve worked all your contracted days and far in excess of your contracted hours, that isn’t enough. We’ve buggered everything up, because we’re stupid. So this year, we’re taking all your holiday entitlement off you as well. If you object, we’ll force you to work. There’s nothing you can do.
What would you do?
If you say you’d roll over and have your tummy tickled, I’ll call you a liar and ask if you work for the DfE.
Now is not the time for sound bites...but you have the future of our country in your hands.
As I said, teaching is a vocation. It is a million miles different from my work today. But it is not so different from my work when I did a vocational job in HMF at which point exactly what you describe happened and often. Not saying that being in HMF is like being a teacher but they are both vocational jobs.
Pompous soundbites are as you admit, not an answer. What would you do?
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
I think that would be reasonable IF the quid pro quo was that we were not expected to spend as much time as we currently do remote teaching, perhaps by having a longer Easter holiday? Alternatively is what you want the socialisation part of school? In which case having the equivalent of a summer camp might be an idea? That could be staffed in a very different way to normal school.
I agree that sounds like a very sensible route, the summer school. But I think it is also beholden upon teachers in this of all years to understand that there may be some sacrifices.
I have never been one of the "teachers have so many holidays" types because a) I have no idea if they are spending every waking hour preparing lesson plans; and b) if they do have more time off then that is one of the attributes of teaching.
But this year is different.
We do get longer holidays, yes. It is one of the perks of teaching. It is such a good perk that the average teacher lasts five years before deciding they would rather do something else.
Same as a short service commission in HMF. I started off by saying that teaching is a vocation. If you want to make a ton of money use that physics to design structured products for Goldman Sachs. Plenty do, of course.
Not many teachers are in it for the money alone: doesn't mean we don't want to get paid, of course.
Absolutely. But there are other factors at play. You are the guardians of the country's children's welfare. OK no one expected the Spanish Inq... Global Pandemic but this falls under the things I should do for the welfare of my wards category.
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
I think that would be reasonable IF the quid pro quo was that we were not expected to spend as much time as we currently do remote teaching, perhaps by having a longer Easter holiday? Alternatively is what you want the socialisation part of school? In which case having the equivalent of a summer camp might be an idea? That could be staffed in a very different way to normal school.
I agree that sounds like a very sensible route, the summer school. But I think it is also beholden upon teachers in this of all years to understand that there may be some sacrifices.
I have never been one of the "teachers have so many holidays" types because a) I have no idea if they are spending every waking hour preparing lesson plans; and b) if they do have more time off then that is one of the attributes of teaching.
But this year is different.
We do get longer holidays, yes. It is one of the perks of teaching. It is such a good perk that the average teacher lasts five years before deciding they would rather do something else.
Same as a short service commission in HMF. I started off by saying that teaching is a vocation. If you want to make a ton of money use that physics to design structured products for Goldman Sachs. Plenty do, of course.
Not many teachers are in it for the money alone: doesn't mean we don't want to get paid, of course.
Absolutely. But there are other factors at play. You are the guardians of the country's children's welfare. OK no one expected the Spanish Inq... Global Pandemic but this falls under the things I should do for the welfare of my wards category.
We’re setting remote learning for precisely that reason.
As it happens, I agree that that was probably the wrong decision and I have been saying since July that we should have rethought the school year. But your proposed solutions are beyond ridiculous.
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
I think that would be reasonable IF the quid pro quo was that we were not expected to spend as much time as we currently do remote teaching, perhaps by having a longer Easter holiday? Alternatively is what you want the socialisation part of school? In which case having the equivalent of a summer camp might be an idea? That could be staffed in a very different way to normal school.
I agree that sounds like a very sensible route, the summer school. But I think it is also beholden upon teachers in this of all years to understand that there may be some sacrifices.
I have never been one of the "teachers have so many holidays" types because a) I have no idea if they are spending every waking hour preparing lesson plans; and b) if they do have more time off then that is one of the attributes of teaching.
But this year is different.
We do get longer holidays, yes. It is one of the perks of teaching. It is such a good perk that the average teacher lasts five years before deciding they would rather do something else.
Same as a short service commission in HMF. I started off by saying that teaching is a vocation. If you want to make a ton of money use that physics to design structured products for Goldman Sachs. Plenty do, of course.
Not many teachers are in it for the money alone: doesn't mean we don't want to get paid, of course.
Absolutely. But there are other factors at play. You are the guardians of the country's children's welfare. OK no one expected the Spanish Inq... Global Pandemic but this falls under the things I should do for the welfare of my wards category.
Which is why, despite being classed as "clinically extremely vulnerable" I was in school teaching for much of the autumn term (apart from lockdown 2 where I was told to stay home) with only the dubious protection of a face mask.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
And my experience is plenty have not.
Why are you moving from anecdotal evidence of poor practice in some schools to saying we should be threatening and bullying teachers as a whole?
I'm not saying we should be threatening or bullying teachers at all. I don't understand the minutiae of the contracts and the DfE edicts or restrictions. What I am saying is that if there arises an opportunity to provide more schooling to children who have woefully missed out on plenty of it, that opportunity should not be blocked by the teachers or their unions.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
My nephew hasn't been given a vast amount and his parents haven't really made a vast amount of effort to get him to do what he has been given either. GCSE year, too.
Bog standard comprehensive.
I'm sure he's very good at video games.
Not all teachers have been making every effort. I expect we don't have a typical sample here.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
And my experience is plenty have not.
Why are you moving from anecdotal evidence of poor practice in some schools to saying we should be threatening and bullying teachers as a whole?
I'm not saying we should be threatening or bullying teachers at all. I don't understand the minutiae of the contracts and the DfE edicts or restrictions. What I am saying is that if there arises an opportunity to provide more schooling to children who have woefully missed out on plenty of it, that opportunity should not be blocked by the teachers or their unions.
And I am telling you that precisely because you don’t understand the issues involved, you are completely wrong and the unions are right, which you proposed to remedy by getting parliament to change the law to break all teachers’ contracts.
And I note you still haven’t answered my question.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
And my experience is plenty have not.
Why are you moving from anecdotal evidence of poor practice in some schools to saying we should be threatening and bullying teachers as a whole?
I'm not saying we should be threatening or bullying teachers at all. I don't understand the minutiae of the contracts and the DfE edicts or restrictions. What I am saying is that if there arises an opportunity to provide more schooling to children who have woefully missed out on plenty of it, that opportunity should not be blocked by the teachers or their unions.
There is scope for extra time in school for those who need it, staffed by volunteers and paid for by someone other than the schools (who mostly now have little money left after the cost of cover in the autumn term). This would be a much better use of resources than a blanket keeping open of schools during the summer holidays.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
My nephew hasn't been given a vast amount and his parents haven't really made a vast amount of effort to get him to do what he has been given either. GCSE year, too.
Bog standard comprehensive.
I'm sure he's very good at video games.
Not all teachers have been making every effort. I expect we don't have a typical sample here.
Or alternatively, he has been given plenty and neglected to tell his parents.
I’ve had a few interesting phone calls with parents along those lines.
‘They’ve done all your work. Why are you complaining?’
‘Because I’ve sent them three lessons worth of work and they’ve done one question in one.’
‘They told me they’ve done it all and you’re lying.’
‘Then I am afraid they are mistaken. Could you ask the, to check these out?’
I’m disturbed that Richard Nabavi thinks ‘contracts can be overridden by the government.’ Sure. They could impose new contracts by diktat. And we can then refuse to sign them and you will have no teachers at all. Plus nobody will ever sign a contract with the British government again.
Why are you disturbed? Governments override contracts very frequently, for example on outlawing excessive working hours, nullifying employment contracts which discriminate against women, or changing the basis under which pension funds pay benefits.
In any case, where did I say the contracts should changed 'by diktat'? I was responding to the suggestion that school holidays are an immutable fact which can never be changed, because of the employment contracts. That is wrong, but of course it should be done by consent and with plenty of notice.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
And my experience is plenty have not.
Why are you moving from anecdotal evidence of poor practice in some schools to saying we should be threatening and bullying teachers as a whole?
I'm not saying we should be threatening or bullying teachers at all. I don't understand the minutiae of the contracts and the DfE edicts or restrictions. What I am saying is that if there arises an opportunity to provide more schooling to children who have woefully missed out on plenty of it, that opportunity should not be blocked by the teachers or their unions.
And I am telling you that precisely because you don’t understand the issues involved, you are completely wrong and the unions are right, which you proposed to remedy by getting parliament to change the law to break all teachers’ contracts.
And I note you still haven’t answered my question.
Ah thank you for that. So in a nutshell, what are the issues preventing increased/make up school time for you and your pupils?
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
I think that would be reasonable IF the quid pro quo was that we were not expected to spend as much time as we currently do remote teaching, perhaps by having a longer Easter holiday? Alternatively is what you want the socialisation part of school? In which case having the equivalent of a summer camp might be an idea? That could be staffed in a very different way to normal school.
I agree that sounds like a very sensible route, the summer school. But I think it is also beholden upon teachers in this of all years to understand that there may be some sacrifices.
I have never been one of the "teachers have so many holidays" types because a) I have no idea if they are spending every waking hour preparing lesson plans; and b) if they do have more time off then that is one of the attributes of teaching.
But this year is different.
We do get longer holidays, yes. It is one of the perks of teaching. It is such a good perk that the average teacher lasts five years before deciding they would rather do something else.
Same as a short service commission in HMF. I started off by saying that teaching is a vocation. If you want to make a ton of money use that physics to design structured products for Goldman Sachs. Plenty do, of course.
Not many teachers are in it for the money alone: doesn't mean we don't want to get paid, of course.
Absolutely. But there are other factors at play. You are the guardians of the country's children's welfare. OK no one expected the Spanish Inq... Global Pandemic but this falls under the things I should do for the welfare of my wards category.
Which is why, despite being classed as "clinically extremely vulnerable" I was in school teaching for much of the autumn term (apart from lockdown 2 where I was told to stay home) with only the dubious protection of a face mask.
I’m disturbed that Richard Nabavi thinks ‘contracts can be overridden by the government.’ Sure. They could impose new contracts by diktat. And we can then refuse to sign them and you will have no teachers at all. Plus nobody will ever sign a contract with the British government again.
Why are you disturbed? Governments override contracts very frequently, for example on outlawing excessive working hours, nullifying employment contracts which discriminate against women, or changing the basis under which pension funds pay benefits.
In any case, where did I say the contracts should changed 'by diktat'? I was responding to the suggestion that school holidays are an immutable fact which can never be changed, because of the employment contracts. That is wrong, but of course it should be done by consent and with plenty of notice.
But that is not what you were proposing.
And incidentally, governments overriding contracts to increase working hours by 20% strikes me as a bit of a first. That didn’t even happen under DORA.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
And my experience is plenty have not.
Why are you moving from anecdotal evidence of poor practice in some schools to saying we should be threatening and bullying teachers as a whole?
I'm not saying we should be threatening or bullying teachers at all. I don't understand the minutiae of the contracts and the DfE edicts or restrictions. What I am saying is that if there arises an opportunity to provide more schooling to children who have woefully missed out on plenty of it, that opportunity should not be blocked by the teachers or their unions.
And I am telling you that precisely because you don’t understand the issues involved, you are completely wrong and the unions are right, which you proposed to remedy by getting parliament to change the law to break all teachers’ contracts.
And I note you still haven’t answered my question.
Ah thank you for that. So in a nutshell, what are the issues preventing increased/make up school time for you and your pupils?
Region of Residence 1st dose 2nd dose Cumulative Total Doses to Date Total 219,760 1,854 221,614 East Of England 21,755 349 22,104 London 29,442 216 29,658 Midlands 47,932 143 48,075 North East And Yorkshire 28,409 483 28,892 North West 26,709 156 26,865 South East 39,206 252 39,458 South West 25,061 253 25,314
For the afternoon Mon-Wed Vaccine Number panic, please form an orderly queue. Tea and biscuits will be served.
Mr Bryant wrote on Facebook: ‘It’s a shame that the lack of supply of the Pfizer vaccine for the next two or three weeks means that the mass vaccination centre is going to have to close temporarily.’
Officials have stressed that the problems will not impact those who are already booked in for their second jab next week. People who received the vaccine in December are now due to have their second dose, in line with the UK Government’s current strategy of leaving a 12 week gap between doses. In a statement, the Welsh Government said: ‘Over the next couple of weeks, we are expecting a slight reduction in the amount of vaccines we will receive from the UK government – this is a planned and expected change in supply that will affect the whole of the UK.
It'll be the same elsewhere, no worries - the mass vaccination centres can reopen when we get more supplies.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
My nephew hasn't been given a vast amount and his parents haven't really made a vast amount of effort to get him to do what he has been given either. GCSE year, too.
Bog standard comprehensive.
I'm sure he's very good at video games.
Not all teachers have been making every effort. I expect we don't have a typical sample here.
Or alternatively, he has been given plenty and neglected to tell his parents.
I’ve had a few interesting phone calls with parents along those lines.
‘They’ve done all your work. Why are you complaining?’
‘Because I’ve sent them three lessons worth of work and they’ve done one question in one.’
‘They told me they’ve done it all and you’re lying.’
‘Then I am afraid they are mistaken. Could you ask the, to check these out?’
That is the biggest problem I have had too: how to get a reluctant pupil to engage when they do not access the work and teaching you provide.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
My nephew hasn't been given a vast amount and his parents haven't really made a vast amount of effort to get him to do what he has been given either. GCSE year, too.
Bog standard comprehensive.
I'm sure he's very good at video games.
Not all teachers have been making every effort. I expect we don't have a typical sample here.
Or alternatively, he has been given plenty and neglected to tell his parents.
I’ve had a few interesting phone calls with parents along those lines.
‘They’ve done all your work. Why are you complaining?’
‘Because I’ve sent them three lessons worth of work and they’ve done one question in one.’
‘They told me they’ve done it all and you’re lying.’
‘Then I am afraid they are mistaken. Could you ask the, to check these out?’
Isn't that all part of the problem. That wouldn't happen in school because the teachers and the receivers of the work would be the same person.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
Mine’s a mixture:
Live lessons Resources with audio explanations Videos (takes a bloody age to edit them) Research tasks.
I don’t think there’s a single student who has sent me a single piece of work over the last six weeks that hasn’t had a personal voice note left for them to say what they can do and how to improve.
Which is especially hard work as I usually find, when marking, that I need soothing music on to concentrate - not really possible when marking verbally.
And yet, apparently, we’re not working.
I think teachers are doing a fantastic job just coping with the changed circumstances.
My eldest is in yr6 and his teacher was off sick so the other teacher in his year has been teaching almost 60 kids over zoom. She has been amazing.
Wow. That must be dammed hard work for her. It’s not the teaching so much - a lesson is a lesson - but the mere thought of the marking load makes me feel ill. Serious respect.
She has been absolutely brilliant - it is all submitted via Google classroom and she will provide brief comments on the main piece of work for the day. It is a marked contrast with my youngests yr 2 teacher who doesn't seem to comprehend what that age can do particularly without supervision.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
And my experience is plenty have not.
Why are you moving from anecdotal evidence of poor practice in some schools to saying we should be threatening and bullying teachers as a whole?
I'm not saying we should be threatening or bullying teachers at all. I don't understand the minutiae of the contracts and the DfE edicts or restrictions. What I am saying is that if there arises an opportunity to provide more schooling to children who have woefully missed out on plenty of it, that opportunity should not be blocked by the teachers or their unions.
And I am telling you that precisely because you don’t understand the issues involved, you are completely wrong and the unions are right, which you proposed to remedy by getting parliament to change the law to break all teachers’ contracts.
And I note you still haven’t answered my question.
Ah thank you for that. So in a nutshell, what are the issues preventing increased/make up school time for you and your pupils?
In a nutshell, I am contracted for 195 days, which include such hours during those days as may reasonably be necessary to carry out my job, at such place as my employer may direct. This does not therefore include the provision for overtime rates or home working.
So to change that requires a contractual change. And given that nobody trusts the government, on account of the fact that they are liars, bullies, thieves and idiots, and everyone is exhausted trying to keep up with the work we are still doing, nobody would take it up.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
My nephew hasn't been given a vast amount and his parents haven't really made a vast amount of effort to get him to do what he has been given either. GCSE year, too.
Bog standard comprehensive.
I'm sure he's very good at video games.
Not all teachers have been making every effort. I expect we don't have a typical sample here.
Or alternatively, he has been given plenty and neglected to tell his parents.
I’ve had a few interesting phone calls with parents along those lines.
‘They’ve done all your work. Why are you complaining?’
‘Because I’ve sent them three lessons worth of work and they’ve done one question in one.’
‘They told me they’ve done it all and you’re lying.’
‘Then I am afraid they are mistaken. Could you ask the, to check these out?’
Isn't that all part of the problem. That wouldn't happen in school because the teachers and the receivers of the work would be the same person.
You really haven’t ever worked in a school, have you?
Pupils have, on average, six years left at school during which to mitigate the impact of the shutdowns. I’d worry that short term measures such as changing this Easter holiday would allow Ministers to think that the box had been ticked and to neglect the longer term.
A serious effort over several years is needed to repair the damage that allows for different approaches based on age and the degree to which individual children have failed to progress - a minority of pupils learning has actually improved. For example, a discussion is needed whether to run GCSEs in 2022 or whether another year of school assessed grades would benefit current Y10s. Also, should the school performance measures be changed to allow fewer examined subjects and more time on extra-curricular activities.
Going back to the remainder of this academic year - it would kind of help if the DfE let it be known how exactly school assessed grades should be done. It’s six weeks since exams were canned and teachers are still waiting.
I'm quite relaxed about this (assuming things get back to normal by September). The tricky thing was always how to handle kids doing exams and then going to university. The next tricky thing is the very young kids as this might affect their development as people.
But 7-14 year olds? I'm not that worried. Just going from my own education, I reckon I progressed in a linear fashion for maths. But for everything else the growth came post-14 when things started to get a bit more serious.
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
They're not governed by the rules of physics, but something nearly as inflexible I suspect: the laws of contracts.
I'm curious what @ydoethur or @Fysics_Teacher would make of the idea of suddenly changing term times and extending the summer term?
Contracts can be overridden by parliament. This is a national emergency, as everyone agrees.
Then stop expecting teachers to provide work during lockdown...
Just as well that NHS staff don't think like that...
NHS staff worked because of goodwill.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
So teachers, alone amongst such vocational professions should expect that their working lives should be absolutely inviolate regardless of circumstances?
Before I respond to this I should ask you exactly what you are proposing?
That teachers and schools, if they are able, should be flexible to make up time in school with their pupils to go some small way to address the inevitable issues that not being in school has presented for those children.
Well, we’re not. We might have been before Christmas, but some criminals, ooops, the DfE stopped us.
I’m disturbed that Richard Nabavi thinks ‘contracts can be overridden by the government.’ Sure. They could impose new contracts by diktat. And we can then refuse to sign them and you will have no teachers at all. Plus nobody will ever sign a contract with the British government again.
This comes back to the idea that lockdown is ‘time off.’ Well it isn’t. I have been teaching in school and out since the 4th January. If you want teaching to go on through Easter we should have stopped setting remote learning. If you say that’s ‘time lost’ maybe we should anyway.
Lockdown hasn't been time off for teachers. But lockdown has occurred because of a global pandemic which has meant a huge amount of a child's life (5-20% depending on age) and a significant amount of their education has been near-catastrophically interrupted.
Extra miles are needed.
But knock yourself out with refusing to sign contracts with the dreaded/cursed DfE.
OK.
Your employer comes to you and says, Topping, we’ve decided even though you’ve worked all your contracted days and far in excess of your contracted hours, that isn’t enough. We’ve buggered everything up, because we’re stupid. So this year, we’re taking all your holiday entitlement off you as well. If you object, we’ll force you to work. There’s nothing you can do.
What would you do?
If you say you’d roll over and have your tummy tickled, I’ll call you a liar and ask if you work for the DfE.
I’m disturbed that Richard Nabavi thinks ‘contracts can be overridden by the government.’ Sure. They could impose new contracts by diktat. And we can then refuse to sign them and you will have no teachers at all. Plus nobody will ever sign a contract with the British government again.
Why are you disturbed? Governments override contracts very frequently, for example on outlawing excessive working hours, nullifying employment contracts which discriminate against women, or changing the basis under which pension funds pay benefits.
In any case, where did I say the contracts should changed 'by diktat'? I was responding to the suggestion that school holidays are an immutable fact which can never be changed, because of the employment contracts. That is wrong, but of course it should be done by consent and with plenty of notice.
But that is not what you were proposing.
And incidentally, governments overriding contracts to increase working hours by 20% strikes me as a bit of a first. That didn’t even happen under DORA.
Overriding contracts (if necessary, which I doubt) so that working hours this year can be increased. As I said, employment contracts are not an obstacle to doing this. I agree that teachers' lack of concern for education might be, if that is a widespread problem.
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
My nephew hasn't been given a vast amount and his parents haven't really made a vast amount of effort to get him to do what he has been given either. GCSE year, too.
Bog standard comprehensive.
I'm sure he's very good at video games.
Not all teachers have been making every effort. I expect we don't have a typical sample here.
Or alternatively, he has been given plenty and neglected to tell his parents.
I’ve had a few interesting phone calls with parents along those lines.
‘They’ve done all your work. Why are you complaining?’
‘Because I’ve sent them three lessons worth of work and they’ve done one question in one.’
‘They told me they’ve done it all and you’re lying.’
‘Then I am afraid they are mistaken. Could you ask the, to check these out?’
Isn't that all part of the problem. That wouldn't happen in school because the teachers and the receivers of the work would be the same person.
True. But we are not in school, so this is the best we can do.
Getting those who have not engaged with remote learning in to school for a catch-up week or three in the summer might be a good solution, particularly if they know in advance that is what will happen, but only for the non-exam years I think.
Region of Residence 1st dose 2nd dose Cumulative Total Doses to Date Total 219,760 1,854 221,614 East Of England 21,755 349 22,104 London 29,442 216 29,658 Midlands 47,932 143 48,075 North East And Yorkshire 28,409 483 28,892 North West 26,709 156 26,865 South East 39,206 252 39,458 South West 25,061 253 25,314
For the afternoon Mon-Wed Vaccine Number panic, please form an orderly queue. Tea and biscuits will be served.
Mr Bryant wrote on Facebook: ‘It’s a shame that the lack of supply of the Pfizer vaccine for the next two or three weeks means that the mass vaccination centre is going to have to close temporarily.’
Officials have stressed that the problems will not impact those who are already booked in for their second jab next week. People who received the vaccine in December are now due to have their second dose, in line with the UK Government’s current strategy of leaving a 12 week gap between doses. In a statement, the Welsh Government said: ‘Over the next couple of weeks, we are expecting a slight reduction in the amount of vaccines we will receive from the UK government – this is a planned and expected change in supply that will affect the whole of the UK.
It'll be the same elsewhere, no worries - the mass vaccination centres can reopen when we get more supplies.
It’s a worldwide issue with Pfizer vaccines, same issues been seen elsewhere and countries are keeping back second doses until they are sure they have new supplies forthcoming.
On topic, a good article Philip though I disagree with the premise and all of the later posts from others about the EU falling apart. I find that to be a very unlikely scenario, even with all of the internal contradictions there is just to much political capital invested by Paris, Berlin and other capital cities across Europe in the concept of the EU. There's just no way the politicians will allow it to fail and they'll use all of the undemocratic means available to keep it going. France votes down the constitution? No worries, we'll just rebrand it as something else and not allow a vote. Britain votes to leave? No worries let's just pretend that they haven't actually left and ignore any successes they have outside of the EU structures.
There's simply no appetite for admitting that the whole political establishment of Europe has been making such poor decisions for so many years.
What's going to happen without the UK is that you'll get France pushing its own foreign policy agenda without any other major foreign policy power to provide a counterweight and Germany will pursue it's mercantilist trade and economic policies without abandon and the EU will turn into a completely parochial organisation selling itself out to the worst regimes for an extra 0.1% worth of GDP because nothing other than more GDP matters to Germany.
If anything the idea of having no internal competitors for foreign and economic policy within the EU will massively appeal to Paris and Berlin. They both get what they want out of the EU, France projects its power and Germany gets to remake the EU in its image and continues to hollow out Southern Europe with no dissent. For that reason the amount of political capital invested to keep the bandwagon going will continue to rise and it will result in the EU as an organisation limping on from crisis to crisis with no real reform and no real democratic legitimacy.
Buried within this analysis is clear example of what Britain has “lost”.
It can no longer influence Europe-wide* foreign policy, and has surrendered that position uncontested to France.
As you say, Germany will be happy with this arrangement is long as countries are forced to buy German defence equipment every so often.
*As opposed to EU, as I believe EU foreign policy to be largely fictional.
As you point out there's nothing of value lost there and if anything it's leading to a diminished EU with their dodgy China deals and sucking off Putin in Moscow.
Our interests are better served with unilateral action or joining up with the US, Canada and Australia.
Not having the UK makes the EU much less relevant to the rest of the world, for me that's actually a big victory. No longer lending them our diplomatic weight is a definite brexit upside that I was looking forwards to.
I am not saying there is nothing of value to be lost there.
Far from it.
In our very own neighbourhood we face an ongoing Russian threat, as well as ongoing issues related to state insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa.
We also aspire (or should) to promote liberal democracy and the freest trade, especially in Europe which remains 50%+ of our trade and will likely remain close to that level for a generation yet.
It is very much in our interests to promote and influence our view on these matters in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and the Med.
It is also useful to have an voice with the pivotal European powers, France and Germany.
We have torn that all up, and our voice is now much diminished.
We are also less interesting to other powers because we can no longer even pretend to influence the rest of Europe.
PS Political and defence partnerships with other Anglo nations were never actually prevented by EU membership. See, for example, the Five Powers Agreement.
I think giving the EU enough rope is something I can live with and something that a lot of leave voters predicted would happen without our influence inside the EU.
Outside of the EU we're already making huge strides in our own policy and we're focusing eastwards, it's already changing how nations are seeing us and how they want to partner with us. Japan, Canada and Australia have all separately asked us to join the CPTPP, Japan has invited us to join military exercises in the Pacific reviving a century old alliance and the US is making noises about the UK joining he quad to make it a pent and also eyeing up the CPTPP.
Our global influence was never enhanced by being in the EU, it was diminished. The EU saw its influence enhanced by having us in it and now you can see without us their desperation to do grubby deals with China and Russia has already lost them a lot of friends and it's driving the Biden administration towards Brexit Britain with open arms.
These are unwelcome truths for you, I realise that. The EU without the UK is going to have a different outlook and the UK out of the EU will capitalise on that. The process has already started and it will continue to see us diverge from the EU in our foreign policy terms and over time in terms of trade, that 45% export value that the EU currently has will fall as the nation starts facing eastwards. The UK-EU relationship will continue to go down in value for both sides and we will have a simple trading relationship with the EU. As it should always have been.
None of this really stacks up.
How is greater defence activity in Asia going to help us? Of course we are welcomed, we have materiel to spare. It will cost us, though. For what?
Over 50% of our trade is with the EU and/or EFTA nations.
Defence policy should be based on our own national interests which follow our geography and trade realities.
We’ve said goodbye to the ability to influence our own neighbourhood!
The EU-China deals shows starkly that we are now out of that conversation.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps.
The problem you're having is that you think today's situation will last forever and that 45% of our exports will always go to the EU. That's not going to be the case and as that number goes down to reflect something more like global GDP proportions the value of the relationship goes down for both sides. Especially for the UK. I'm not sure why you're bundling EU and EFTA nations together either, we have separate trade deals with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland that aren't dependent on the EU trade deal.
The next decade is going to be hugely interesting, especially as the US starts to marshall its allies against China and the EU needs to decide whether having slaves make Siemens dishwashers is more important to them than an alliance with the US, UK and the rest of the democratic alliance.
I'm glad that we're unequivocally on the side of democracy. I guess part of why the EU finds it difficult to criticise undemocratic nations is because the commission is inherently undemocratic.
The problem you have is that you think 50+ (I use that figure as it is *European* trade) will evaporate overnight.
Trading with our neighbours will remain preeminent I’ll wager until I am past retirement (I am early 40s).
That the EU at large is “anti democratic” is utter nonsense; it is a collection of 27 democracies some of which put our own democratic arrangements to shame.
It always amuses me when people from the UK say that the EU is "undemocratic".
We in the UK have the iniquities of FPTP, the House of Lords that still has hereditary peers ffs, hundreds of quangos, numerous laws made by statutory instrument without legislature scrutiny and a head of state (God bless her) who is from a Germanic aristocratic family and there as a result of an indirect hereditary line to those that believed in the divine right of Kings. Add to that a local government system that is a mess and an asymmetric system of devolution that allows Scottish MPs to vote on matters that pertain to England where English MPs are not allowed an equivalent entitlement and a ridiculous system of city "mayors" that has had no uniform rollout across the country. I am sure there are many more examples.
In summary we are in no position of authority to lecture anyone in Europe about democracy.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
And my experience is plenty have not.
Why are you moving from anecdotal evidence of poor practice in some schools to saying we should be threatening and bullying teachers as a whole?
I'm not saying we should be threatening or bullying teachers at all. I don't understand the minutiae of the contracts and the DfE edicts or restrictions. What I am saying is that if there arises an opportunity to provide more schooling to children who have woefully missed out on plenty of it, that opportunity should not be blocked by the teachers or their unions.
And I am telling you that precisely because you don’t understand the issues involved, you are completely wrong and the unions are right, which you proposed to remedy by getting parliament to change the law to break all teachers’ contracts.
And I note you still haven’t answered my question.
Ah thank you for that. So in a nutshell, what are the issues preventing increased/make up school time for you and your pupils?
In a nutshell, I am contracted for 195 days, which include such hours during those days as may reasonably be necessary to carry out my job, at such place as my employer may direct. This does not therefore include the provision for overtime rates or home working.
So to change that requires a contractual change. And given that nobody trusts the government, on account of the fact that they are liars, bullies, thieves and idiots, and everyone is exhausted trying to keep up with the work we are still doing, nobody would take it up.
So theoretically if the govt (liars, bullies, thieves, idiots that they are) said: Look soz but you know, global pandemic and all that, we're going to have to ask you to work an extra 20 days and don't worry you can make that up in future year/and here's your overtime rate, I'm sure you will understand.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
My nephew hasn't been given a vast amount and his parents haven't really made a vast amount of effort to get him to do what he has been given either. GCSE year, too.
Bog standard comprehensive.
I'm sure he's very good at video games.
Not all teachers have been making every effort. I expect we don't have a typical sample here.
Or alternatively, he has been given plenty and neglected to tell his parents.
I’ve had a few interesting phone calls with parents along those lines.
‘They’ve done all your work. Why are you complaining?’
‘Because I’ve sent them three lessons worth of work and they’ve done one question in one.’
‘They told me they’ve done it all and you’re lying.’
‘Then I am afraid they are mistaken. Could you ask the, to check these out?’
Isn't that all part of the problem. That wouldn't happen in school because the teachers and the receivers of the work would be the same person.
True. But we are not in school, so this is the best we can do.
Getting those who have not engaged with remote learning in to school for a catch-up week or three in the summer might be a good solution, particularly if they know in advance that is what will happen, but only for the non-exam years I think.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
My nephew hasn't been given a vast amount and his parents haven't really made a vast amount of effort to get him to do what he has been given either. GCSE year, too.
Bog standard comprehensive.
I'm sure he's very good at video games.
Not all teachers have been making every effort. I expect we don't have a typical sample here.
Or alternatively, he has been given plenty and neglected to tell his parents.
I’ve had a few interesting phone calls with parents along those lines.
‘They’ve done all your work. Why are you complaining?’
‘Because I’ve sent them three lessons worth of work and they’ve done one question in one.’
‘They told me they’ve done it all and you’re lying.’
‘Then I am afraid they are mistaken. Could you ask the, to check these out?’
Isn't that all part of the problem. That wouldn't happen in school because the teachers and the receivers of the work would be the same person.
You really haven’t ever worked in a school, have you?
Pupils have, on average, six years left at school during which to mitigate the impact of the shutdowns. I’d worry that short term measures such as changing this Easter holiday would allow Ministers to think that the box had been ticked and to neglect the longer term.
A serious effort over several years is needed to repair the damage that allows for different approaches based on age and the degree to which individual children have failed to progress - a minority of pupils learning has actually improved. For example, a discussion is needed whether to run GCSEs in 2022 or whether another year of school assessed grades would benefit current Y10s. Also, should the school performance measures be changed to allow fewer examined subjects and more time on extra-curricular activities.
Going back to the remainder of this academic year - it would kind of help if the DfE let it be known how exactly school assessed grades should be done. It’s six weeks since exams were canned and teachers are still waiting.
I'm quite relaxed about this (assuming things get back to normal by September). The tricky thing was always how to handle kids doing exams and then going to university. The next tricky thing is the very young kids as this might affect their development as people.
But 7-14 year olds? I'm not that worried. Just going from my own education, I reckon I progressed in a linear fashion for maths. But for everything else the growth came post-14 when things started to get a bit more serious.
As my sister put it: you want them to be young enough to totally snap out of it but not so young that it is formative.
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
I’m disturbed that Richard Nabavi thinks ‘contracts can be overridden by the government.’ Sure. They could impose new contracts by diktat. And we can then refuse to sign them and you will have no teachers at all. Plus nobody will ever sign a contract with the British government again.
Why are you disturbed? Governments override contracts very frequently, for example on outlawing excessive working hours, nullifying employment contracts which discriminate against women, or changing the basis under which pension funds pay benefits.
In any case, where did I say the contracts should changed 'by diktat'? I was responding to the suggestion that school holidays are an immutable fact which can never be changed, because of the employment contracts. That is wrong, but of course it should be done by consent and with plenty of notice.
But that is not what you were proposing.
And incidentally, governments overriding contracts to increase working hours by 20% strikes me as a bit of a first. That didn’t even happen under DORA.
Overriding contracts (if necessary, which I doubt) so that working hours this year can be increased. As I said, employment contracts are not an obstacle to doing this. I agree that teachers' lack of concern for education might be, if that is a widespread problem.
Teachers are deeply concerned with education, Richard. That’s why we’re teachers. Those who aren’t do not last long. We’re not like the DfE, or Ofsted, who only care for themselves. Your comment is therefore actually outrageous and I’ll give you the opportunity to withdraw it.
Your doubts are wrong. As I outline above.
As for the rest, you are assuming remote learning is no use. Which may be correct. But if so, why are we bothering to do it at all? Why don’t we just take the time off now and then abolish the holidays?
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
What makes you think we aren't? It is much easier to teach in a classroom both because of the resources to hand and because of the instant feedback you get from seeing how the class reacts. The only real downside for some is the commute, and even there for me the daily exercise of walking to school is something I am missing. There is also the fellowship of the common room, talking things over with colleagues, which is hard to replicate in a zoom meeting.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
My nephew hasn't been given a vast amount and his parents haven't really made a vast amount of effort to get him to do what he has been given either. GCSE year, too.
Bog standard comprehensive.
I'm sure he's very good at video games.
Not all teachers have been making every effort. I expect we don't have a typical sample here.
Or alternatively, he has been given plenty and neglected to tell his parents.
I’ve had a few interesting phone calls with parents along those lines.
‘They’ve done all your work. Why are you complaining?’
‘Because I’ve sent them three lessons worth of work and they’ve done one question in one.’
‘They told me they’ve done it all and you’re lying.’
‘Then I am afraid they are mistaken. Could you ask the, to check these out?’
Ha! I can't say whether you are definitely right or not (I don't think so, although I haven't spoken to him directly for a while) but if you are right then that's definitely an argument for having him in school. You might of course also find that the parents knew but couldn't be bothered with the effort of getting their child to do it...
The real shame here is that it is children like him without academic or particularly ambitious parents who will do worst out of this and it will only make the current inequalities worse.
I understand the need for lesson preparation if you are teaching a specific curriculum, but just having children in school learning would seem to be an improvement on the current situation.
Perhaps it would have been better to move the Easter "holiday" and take 4 weeks off from online learning during lockdown instead of keeping the holidays as they are. The problem is that the government probably still aren't sure exactly when the virus will allow schools to open.
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
The sample of teachers on here is a very accurrate representation of the view of the vast majority of teachers.
It's so nostalgic to see this throw-back to the work-to-rule attitude of the 1960s. Now disappeared everywhere, except in the one sector of state-employed teachers.
On topic, a good article Philip though I disagree with the premise and all of the later posts from others about the EU falling apart. I find that to be a very unlikely scenario, even with all of the internal contradictions there is just to much political capital invested by Paris, Berlin and other capital cities across Europe in the concept of the EU. There's just no way the politicians will allow it to fail and they'll use all of the undemocratic means available to keep it going. France votes down the constitution? No worries, we'll just rebrand it as something else and not allow a vote. Britain votes to leave? No worries let's just pretend that they haven't actually left and ignore any successes they have outside of the EU structures.
There's simply no appetite for admitting that the whole political establishment of Europe has been making such poor decisions for so many years.
What's going to happen without the UK is that you'll get France pushing its own foreign policy agenda without any other major foreign policy power to provide a counterweight and Germany will pursue it's mercantilist trade and economic policies without abandon and the EU will turn into a completely parochial organisation selling itself out to the worst regimes for an extra 0.1% worth of GDP because nothing other than more GDP matters to Germany.
If anything the idea of having no internal competitors for foreign and economic policy within the EU will massively appeal to Paris and Berlin. They both get what they want out of the EU, France projects its power and Germany gets to remake the EU in its image and continues to hollow out Southern Europe with no dissent. For that reason the amount of political capital invested to keep the bandwagon going will continue to rise and it will result in the EU as an organisation limping on from crisis to crisis with no real reform and no real democratic legitimacy.
Buried within this analysis is clear example of what Britain has “lost”.
It can no longer influence Europe-wide* foreign policy, and has surrendered that position uncontested to France.
As you say, Germany will be happy with this arrangement is long as countries are forced to buy German defence equipment every so often.
*As opposed to EU, as I believe EU foreign policy to be largely fictional.
As you point out there's nothing of value lost there and if anything it's leading to a diminished EU with their dodgy China deals and sucking off Putin in Moscow.
Our interests are better served with unilateral action or joining up with the US, Canada and Australia.
Not having the UK makes the EU much less relevant to the rest of the world, for me that's actually a big victory. No longer lending them our diplomatic weight is a definite brexit upside that I was looking forwards to.
I am not saying there is nothing of value to be lost there.
Far from it.
In our very own neighbourhood we face an ongoing Russian threat, as well as ongoing issues related to state insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa.
We also aspire (or should) to promote liberal democracy and the freest trade, especially in Europe which remains 50%+ of our trade and will likely remain close to that level for a generation yet.
It is very much in our interests to promote and influence our view on these matters in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and the Med.
It is also useful to have an voice with the pivotal European powers, France and Germany.
We have torn that all up, and our voice is now much diminished.
We are also less interesting to other powers because we can no longer even pretend to influence the rest of Europe.
PS Political and defence partnerships with other Anglo nations were never actually prevented by EU membership. See, for example, the Five Powers Agreement.
I think giving the EU enough rope is something I can live with and something that a lot of leave voters predicted would happen without our influence inside the EU.
Outside of the EU we're already making huge strides in our own policy and we're focusing eastwards, it's already changing how nations are seeing us and how they want to partner with us. Japan, Canada and Australia have all separately asked us to join the CPTPP, Japan has invited us to join military exercises in the Pacific reviving a century old alliance and the US is making noises about the UK joining he quad to make it a pent and also eyeing up the CPTPP.
Our global influence was never enhanced by being in the EU, it was diminished. The EU saw its influence enhanced by having us in it and now you can see without us their desperation to do grubby deals with China and Russia has already lost them a lot of friends and it's driving the Biden administration towards Brexit Britain with open arms.
These are unwelcome truths for you, I realise that. The EU without the UK is going to have a different outlook and the UK out of the EU will capitalise on that. The process has already started and it will continue to see us diverge from the EU in our foreign policy terms and over time in terms of trade, that 45% export value that the EU currently has will fall as the nation starts facing eastwards. The UK-EU relationship will continue to go down in value for both sides and we will have a simple trading relationship with the EU. As it should always have been.
None of this really stacks up.
How is greater defence activity in Asia going to help us? Of course we are welcomed, we have materiel to spare. It will cost us, though. For what?
Over 50% of our trade is with the EU and/or EFTA nations.
Defence policy should be based on our own national interests which follow our geography and trade realities.
We’ve said goodbye to the ability to influence our own neighbourhood!
The EU-China deals shows starkly that we are now out of that conversation.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps.
The problem you're having is that you think today's situation will last forever and that 45% of our exports will always go to the EU. That's not going to be the case and as that number goes down to reflect something more like global GDP proportions the value of the relationship goes down for both sides. Especially for the UK. I'm not sure why you're bundling EU and EFTA nations together either, we have separate trade deals with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland that aren't dependent on the EU trade deal.
The next decade is going to be hugely interesting, especially as the US starts to marshall its allies against China and the EU needs to decide whether having slaves make Siemens dishwashers is more important to them than an alliance with the US, UK and the rest of the democratic alliance.
I'm glad that we're unequivocally on the side of democracy. I guess part of why the EU finds it difficult to criticise undemocratic nations is because the commission is inherently undemocratic.
The problem you have is that you think 50+ (I use that figure as it is *European* trade) will evaporate overnight.
Trading with our neighbours will remain preeminent I’ll wager until I am past retirement (I am early 40s).
That the EU at large is “anti democratic” is utter nonsense; it is a collection of 27 democracies some of which put our own democratic arrangements to shame.
It always amuses me when people from the UK say that the EU is "undemocratic".
We in the UK have the iniquities of FPTP, the House of Lords that still has hereditary peers ffs, hundreds of quangos, numerous laws made by statutory instrument without legislature scrutiny and a head of state (God bless her) who is from a Germanic aristocratic family and there as a result of an indirect hereditary line to those that believed in the divine right of Kings. Add to that a local government system that is a mess and an asymmetric system of devolution that allows Scottish MPs to vote on matters that pertain to England where English MPs are not allowed an equivalent entitlement and a ridiculous system of city "mayors" that has had no uniform rollout across the country. I am sure there are many more examples.
In summary we are in no position of authority to lecture anyone in Europe about democracy.
That is out of date re MPs for Scots constituencies. EVEL, please remember (irrespective of what is SNP policy anyway). But the SNP agree with you on much of the rest.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
And my experience is plenty have not.
Why are you moving from anecdotal evidence of poor practice in some schools to saying we should be threatening and bullying teachers as a whole?
I'm not saying we should be threatening or bullying teachers at all. I don't understand the minutiae of the contracts and the DfE edicts or restrictions. What I am saying is that if there arises an opportunity to provide more schooling to children who have woefully missed out on plenty of it, that opportunity should not be blocked by the teachers or their unions.
And I am telling you that precisely because you don’t understand the issues involved, you are completely wrong and the unions are right, which you proposed to remedy by getting parliament to change the law to break all teachers’ contracts.
And I note you still haven’t answered my question.
Ah thank you for that. So in a nutshell, what are the issues preventing increased/make up school time for you and your pupils?
In a nutshell, I am contracted for 195 days, which include such hours during those days as may reasonably be necessary to carry out my job, at such place as my employer may direct. This does not therefore include the provision for overtime rates or home working.
So to change that requires a contractual change. And given that nobody trusts the government, on account of the fact that they are liars, bullies, thieves and idiots, and everyone is exhausted trying to keep up with the work we are still doing, nobody would take it up.
So theoretically if the govt (liars, bullies, thieves, idiots that they are) said: Look soz but you know, global pandemic and all that, we're going to have to ask you to work an extra 20 days and don't worry you can make that up in future year/and here's your overtime rate, I'm sure you will understand.
You would say no.
I’m already down to work on catch up classes, on an agreed overtime rate. So actually I said yes.
But if the government wants to permanently rewrite my contract to get a good headline in the daily mail and show the DfE is still relevant, the answer is no.
And what’s happened in schools is because of their incompetent handling of the pandemic.
And again I come back to what would you do in those circumstances? Bear in mind please, which I think you and Richard do not fully grasp, when schools are in session teachers cannot have any time off. So no holiday of any sort this year for teachers in your proposals. No time to rest, no time to plan, and no time with family.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps. ....
Hmm, bit of a reinterpretation of history there. I seem to recall that one of the promised benefits of Brexit was precisely that we were supposedly going to be able to do our own deal with the slave-labour providers:
Smaller countries, like Iceland and Switzerland, which are outside the EU and don’t have to deal with all of its bureaucratic problems, have been able to strike free trade agreements with China. If we Vote Leave and take back control, we will gain the power to strike our own trade deals, creating new business opportunities and creating more jobs. (from the Vote Leave website).
That was before they attacked Hong Kong and the Uighurs.
Does that change nothing in your eyes?
Yes, it does to an extent. However, that doesn't alter the point that Leave advocates were dead keen to do deals with China, just as the EU has been, and well after the period where it became obvious that China was becoming more authoritarian and more contemptuous of human rights. After all, the Uighur scandal has been going on since 2014, and became increasingly nasty from 2017. Equally, the Hong Kong repression started a while back.
It is true that the UK (and the US) have been a bit quicker than the EU to recognise the new reality, for which they deserve some credit. But we're still doing plenty of business with China, and accepting investment from Chinese companies which are ultimately controlled by the state. The EU shouldn't have done its deal with China - and indeed, the deal might not be ratified by the European parliament - but I don't think their position is really all that different from the rest of the Western world.
It’s been poorly understood in the West for too long that it’s deeply engaged (and losing) what is effectively world war 3 against Chinese Communism. TSE’s hero George was as bad as anyone, his prostrating in front of the Chinese reds making the country a laughing stock in the areas of Asia that are suspicious of Chinese communism.
It’s a war being fought to ensure technological, economic, cultural and military dominance for Chinese communism and is seen by the chief designers very squarely along lines not just of political ideology but importantly of racial superiority.
The chief weapons utilised so far have been trade, monopolisation of key natural resources and propaganda, with outsized public investment and r&d funded by printed money, and the gradual but definite erosion of private enterprise to national interest based central planning. We’re now starting to see the re-drawing of “contested” areas of the map as well.
Throw in the racial/religious based-subjugation of a group into slave camps, a nationalist leader who has swatted aside all political opposition, the now total control of both internal and external movement and a tighter control of information than ever before. And the parallels with the 1930s become eerie.
It’s a relief that the penny seems to have dropped in policy circles in the Anglo-sphere. It is a disappointment but no great surprise than continental Europe has still not seen sense.
It's so nostalgic to see this throw-back to the work-to-rule attitude of the 1960s. Now disappeared everywhere, except in the one sector of state-employed teachers.
If you think teachers work to rule, then you don't know many.
Region of Residence 1st dose 2nd dose Cumulative Total Doses to Date Total 219,760 1,854 221,614 East Of England 21,755 349 22,104 London 29,442 216 29,658 Midlands 47,932 143 48,075 North East And Yorkshire 28,409 483 28,892 North West 26,709 156 26,865 South East 39,206 252 39,458 South West 25,061 253 25,314
For the afternoon Mon-Wed Vaccine Number panic, please form an orderly queue. Tea and biscuits will be served.
Mr Bryant wrote on Facebook: ‘It’s a shame that the lack of supply of the Pfizer vaccine for the next two or three weeks means that the mass vaccination centre is going to have to close temporarily.’
Officials have stressed that the problems will not impact those who are already booked in for their second jab next week. People who received the vaccine in December are now due to have their second dose, in line with the UK Government’s current strategy of leaving a 12 week gap between doses. In a statement, the Welsh Government said: ‘Over the next couple of weeks, we are expecting a slight reduction in the amount of vaccines we will receive from the UK government – this is a planned and expected change in supply that will affect the whole of the UK.
It'll be the same elsewhere, no worries - the mass vaccination centres can reopen when we get more supplies.
Indeed. For those who like wild swings in supply on a weekly basis
Was that meant to be ironic? It's just that there are a lot of people on here who seem to know much more about the workings of schools that those of us who just happen to be teachers...
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
Hardly surprising if they haven't been immunised.
Yes. I had some sympathy with Keir's teacher vaccination scheme for that reason.
Comments
Alternatively is what you want the socialisation part of school? In which case having the equivalent of a summer camp might be an idea? That could be staffed in a very different way to normal school.
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
Getting any of the vaccines is ~ functionally equivalent to having had the virus (Or slightly better if anything) which to my mind should reduce a mutant infection to something like the flu; patterns of mild and moderate illness in unlucky mutant hosts seem to suggest that. My immune system should well be able to handle it.
I have never been one of the "teachers have so many holidays" types because a) I have no idea if they are spending every waking hour preparing lesson plans; and b) if they do have more time off then that is one of the attributes of teaching.
But this year is different.
Does that change nothing in your eyes?
And it's mainly the mums who have been trying to both look after children / teach them and work at the same time.
I’m disturbed that Richard Nabavi thinks ‘contracts can be overridden by the government.’ Sure. They could impose new contracts by diktat. And we can then refuse to sign them and you will have no teachers at all. Plus nobody will ever sign a contract with the British government again.
This comes back to the idea that lockdown is ‘time off.’ Well it isn’t. I have been teaching in school and out since the 4th January. If you want teaching to go on through Easter we should have stopped setting remote learning. If you say that’s ‘time lost’ maybe we should anyway.
And would you believe it, the useless pillocks are STILL doing inspections, amazingly, including onsite inspections?
Can any defender of OFSTED - I know we have a few on here - defend that?
All this could have been thought about back in July August last year - it was obvious that lockdowns might be required and that exams were likely not to be possible but rather than planning for the possibility nothing was done until things were inevitable.
You have a group of children at a certain level who, it seems and certainly in the state system, have been left high and dry.
Just get them into school, put a teacher in front of them and let the teacher do what teachers do. Go over old stuff? Go over stuff that should have been taught at home? Have fun with numbers/prose/continents/kings? All of that.
My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I’m very struck at times by how middle class this board is. Or the DfE, for the matter of that.
Extra miles are needed.
But knock yourself out with refusing to sign contracts with the dreaded/cursed DfE.
Live lessons
Resources with audio explanations
Videos (takes a bloody age to edit them)
Research tasks.
I don’t think there’s a single student who has sent me a single piece of work over the last six weeks that hasn’t had a personal voice note left for them to say what they can do and how to improve.
Which is especially hard work as I usually find, when marking, that I need soothing music on to concentrate - not really possible when marking verbally.
And yet, apparently, we’re not working.
It may be before the West at large noticed or had to do something.
Your employer comes to you and says, Topping, we’ve decided even though you’ve worked all your contracted days and far in excess of your contracted hours, that isn’t enough. We’ve buggered everything up, because we’re stupid. So this year, we’re taking all your holiday entitlement off you as well. If you object, we’ll force you to work. There’s nothing you can do.
What would you do?
If you say you’d roll over and have your tummy tickled, I’ll call you a liar and ask if you work for the DfE.
My eldest is in yr6 and his teacher was off sick so the other teacher in his year has been teaching almost 60 kids over zoom. She has been amazing.
A week at Easter.
2 weeks at Christmas and New Year
four weeks annual leave
Up to 36 days a year flexi (which we of course can’t have)
I make that 14 weeks total, which compares to 13 weeks in the teaching profession.
That’s an awful lot more than the private sector, of course.
My wife spent last week in the classroom teaching essential workers' children.
School H&S dictated all windows and doors left open, which was interesting in the sub zero temperatures.
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1361679617447329792?s=20
But that’s only because I live at distance from my school and so I am saving two hours’ travelling time every day.
It is true that the UK (and the US) have been a bit quicker than the EU to recognise the new reality, for which they deserve some credit. But we're still doing plenty of business with China, and accepting investment from Chinese companies which are ultimately controlled by the state. The EU shouldn't have done its deal with China - and indeed, the deal might not be ratified by the European parliament - but I don't think their position is really all that different from the rest of the Western world.
What is an ingenious idea is flipping the Easter break so Easter is at the end not the beginning – I hadn't encountered that before and it has real merit.
Region of Residence 1st dose 2nd dose Cumulative Total Doses to Date
Total 219,760 1,854 221,614
East Of England 21,755 349 22,104
London 29,442 216 29,658
Midlands 47,932 143 48,075
North East And Yorkshire 28,409 483 28,892
North West 26,709 156 26,865
South East 39,206 252 39,458
South West 25,061 253 25,314
For the afternoon Mon-Wed Vaccine Number panic, please form an orderly queue. Tea and biscuits will be served.
I don't think anything meaningful was ever going to emerge from an Education department led by Williamson.
As I said, teaching is a vocation. It is a million miles different from my work today. But it is not so different from my work when I did a vocational job in HMF at which point exactly what you describe happened and often. Not saying that being in HMF is like being a teacher but they are both vocational jobs.
Why are you moving from anecdotal evidence of poor practice in some schools to saying we should be threatening and bullying teachers as a whole?
A serious effort over several years is needed to repair the damage that allows for different approaches based on age and the degree to which individual children have failed to progress - a minority of pupils learning has actually improved. For example, a discussion is needed whether to run GCSEs in 2022 or whether another year of school assessed grades would benefit current Y10s. Also, should the school performance measures be changed to allow fewer examined subjects and more time on extra-curricular activities.
Going back to the remainder of this academic year - it would kind of help if the DfE let it be known how exactly school assessed grades should be done. It’s six weeks since exams were canned and teachers are still waiting.
Spanish Inq...Global Pandemic but this falls under the things I should do for the welfare of my wards category.As it happens, I agree that that was probably the wrong decision and I have been saying since July that we should have rethought the school year. But your proposed solutions are beyond ridiculous.
Bog standard comprehensive.
I'm sure he's very good at video games.
Not all teachers have been making every effort. I expect we don't have a typical sample here.
And I note you still haven’t answered my question.
I’ve had a few interesting phone calls with parents along those lines.
‘They’ve done all your work. Why are you complaining?’
‘Because I’ve sent them three lessons worth of work and they’ve done one question in one.’
‘They told me they’ve done it all and you’re lying.’
‘Then I am afraid they are mistaken. Could you ask the, to check these out?’
In any case, where did I say the contracts should changed 'by diktat'? I was responding to the suggestion that school holidays are an immutable fact which can never be changed, because of the employment contracts. That is wrong, but of course it should be done by consent and with plenty of notice.
And incidentally, governments overriding contracts to increase working hours by 20% strikes me as a bit of a first. That didn’t even happen under DORA.
https://metro.co.uk/2021/02/11/covid-mass-vaccine-centre-forced-to-close-due-to-supply-issues-14064786/?ito=socialmetrouktwitter
Mr Bryant wrote on Facebook: ‘It’s a shame that the lack of supply of the Pfizer vaccine for the next two or three weeks means that the mass vaccination centre is going to have to close temporarily.’
Officials have stressed that the problems will not impact those who are already booked in for their second jab next week. People who received the vaccine in December are now due to have their second dose, in line with the UK Government’s current strategy of leaving a 12 week gap between doses. In a statement, the Welsh Government said: ‘Over the next couple of weeks, we are expecting a slight reduction in the amount of vaccines we will receive from the UK government – this is a planned and expected change in supply that will affect the whole of the UK.
It'll be the same elsewhere, no worries - the mass vaccination centres can reopen when we get more supplies.
So to change that requires a contractual change. And given that nobody trusts the government, on account of the fact that they are liars, bullies, thieves and idiots, and everyone is exhausted trying to keep up with the work we are still doing, nobody would take it up.
But 7-14 year olds? I'm not that worried. Just going from my own education, I reckon I progressed in a linear fashion for maths. But for everything else the growth came post-14 when things started to get a bit more serious.
This was the question,
Getting those who have not engaged with remote learning in to school for a catch-up week or three in the summer might be a good solution, particularly if they know in advance that is what will happen, but only for the non-exam years I think.
We in the UK have the iniquities of FPTP, the House of Lords that still has hereditary peers ffs, hundreds of quangos, numerous laws made by statutory instrument without legislature scrutiny and a head of state (God bless her) who is from a Germanic aristocratic family and there as a result of an indirect hereditary line to those that believed in the divine right of Kings. Add to that a local government system that is a mess and an asymmetric system of devolution that allows Scottish MPs to vote on matters that pertain to England where English MPs are not allowed an equivalent entitlement and a ridiculous system of city "mayors" that has had no uniform rollout across the country. I am sure there are many more examples.
In summary we are in no position of authority to lecture anyone in Europe about democracy.
You would say no.
Your doubts are wrong. As I outline above.
As for the rest, you are assuming remote learning is no use. Which may be correct. But if so, why are we bothering to do it at all? Why don’t we just take the time off now and then abolish the holidays?
There is also the fellowship of the common room, talking things over with colleagues, which is hard to replicate in a zoom meeting.
The real shame here is that it is children like him without academic or particularly ambitious parents who will do worst out of this and it will only make the current inequalities worse.
I understand the need for lesson preparation if you are teaching a specific curriculum, but just having children in school learning would seem to be an improvement on the current situation.
Perhaps it would have been better to move the Easter "holiday" and take 4 weeks off from online learning during lockdown instead of keeping the holidays as they are. The problem is that the government probably still aren't sure exactly when the virus will allow schools to open.
https://twitter.com/susie_dent/status/1361670181362298882
But if the government wants to permanently rewrite my contract to get a good headline in the daily mail and show the DfE is still relevant, the answer is no.
And what’s happened in schools is because of their incompetent handling of the pandemic.
And again I come back to what would you do in those circumstances? Bear in mind please, which I think you and Richard do not fully grasp, when schools are in session teachers cannot have any time off. So no holiday of any sort this year for teachers in your proposals. No time to rest, no time to plan, and no time with family.
Would you take it? Fifth time of asking.
It’s a war being fought to ensure technological, economic, cultural and military dominance for Chinese communism and is seen by the chief designers very squarely along lines not just of political ideology but importantly of racial superiority.
The chief weapons utilised so far have been trade, monopolisation of key natural resources and propaganda, with outsized public investment and r&d funded by printed money, and the gradual but definite erosion of private enterprise to national interest based central planning. We’re now starting to see the re-drawing of “contested” areas of the map as well.
Throw in the racial/religious based-subjugation of a group into slave camps, a nationalist leader who has swatted aside all political opposition, the now total control of both internal and external movement and a tighter control of information than ever before. And the parallels with the 1930s become eerie.
It’s a relief that the penny seems to have dropped in policy circles in the Anglo-sphere. It is a disappointment but no great surprise than continental Europe has still not seen sense.
Covid wars launch DeSantis into GOP ‘top tier’
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/16/covid-ron-desantis-2024-469071
Also having something of a moment on Betfair, if you check his odds.
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2021-01-01..latest&country=~USA®ion=World&vaccinationsMetric=true&interval=daily&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=population&pickerSort=desc