#COVID19 | Page 897 | Vital Football

#COVID19

Pope John XXIII said:
Either you have replied to the wrong person or you need to read my post again
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A friend of mine, who's wife is a Teacher, reckons Williamson is going to lengthen the School day and do away with a number of Holidays until some semblance of normality returns.

Would that help?

It may help those in the first Year of Sixth form catch up a little but surely it would not do much good for those who are about to leave School.

Would it?
 
mao tse tung said:
A friend of mine, who's wife is a Teacher, reckons Williamson is going to lengthen the School day and do away with a number of Holidays until some semblance of normality returns.

Would that help?

It may help those in the first Year of Sixth form catch up a little but surely it would not do much good for those who are about to leave School.

Would it?
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Help what?

Help them get closer to an arbitrarily set amount of knowledge needed for an arbitrarily set exam?

Not really. Whatever they add onto a school day in secondary has to be shared around 10-13 subjects. So it will make sod all difference to most. It will also kill off any booster or intervention classes for exam year groups. If we are teaching until 4 or 5pm anyway, we won't be able to offer additional group intervention for kids that need it like we do now.

Learning is the most exhausting thing you can do. The school day is a good length. It's the length it is for a reason. The last lesson of the day is always the least productive. Adding a couple of hours per day will bring about ever decreasing returns through exhaustion.

Maximum term length that children of all ages can manage well in my experience is 7 weeks. Any terms that go into an 8th week always see a massive decline in behaviour in the final two weeks. No one at the DFE would know that, because the vanishingly small number who have ever worked in a school have never worked in a real school.

The government also has the 1265 (I think that's the number) agreement with teachung unions. That limits the school year to 1,265 hours of directed time for teachers. This includes anything we are asked to do by our headteacher- lessons, supervisions, parents evenings, etc, but it doesn't include any of the additional hours we put in out of school for marking, preparation, phoning parents etc.

Most schools plan right to the edge of 1265. So, if the government wants to scrap holidays or extend the day they will have to shatter that. And I will happily go on strike over that, because it is the only workload safeguard we have..

Worth noting that many countries in the world have shorter days in school than us and almost all have longer holidays- much longer in most cases.

I always think it's important to avoid this horrific working class (and middle class) tendency to think it's a good thing to programme our children to be 60 hour a week working drones.

There is talk of going to the 5 term year as well. That basically means you have 8 weeks on, 2 weeks off all year with a month long summer. Djanogly City Academy used to do this. It has its pluses and minuses. You are only ever 8 weeks from a long holiday. But an 8 week term is a killer, and that eighth week doesn't see anything like the learning of week 1.

It also doesn't fit around bank holidays like the current holiday pattern does, so you actually end up with more holiday and less teaching time; currently every bank holiday other than mayday falls within half terms anyway.
 
How would you feel about extending school hours on a voluntary basis per pupil? I haven't really thought about how it would work but some kids may need the extra time away from home?
 
i am a tree said:
How would you feel about extending school hours on a voluntary basis per pupil? I haven't really thought about how it would work but some kids may need the extra time away from home?
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To do what though?

It's important we move away from this idea that teachers are basically childcare. We are not. I know that wasn't your intention, but every media idea that just involves children spending more time with us without really considering what you want them doing effectively renders us as childcare.

I am a professional, graduate history teacher. What do you want me doing? I can teach an extra lesson with my class of a certain year group, no problem. I do that anyway with exam groups and have done throughout my career. But I can't really teach a class of multiple years. They need to be learning different things, and what would be the purpose other than to give Mr Williamson something he can claim makes him look good? What is the purpose and impact?

You still have 1265 to get around as well.

These random kids who "choose" to stay- who is choosing for them? Because the kids who need it won't want to, and neither will their parents.

You say they may need extra time away from home. That is very true. But how diseased are we as a society that we simply accept that and put no money or resources into trying to change that? Instead, we are prepared to put that money into schemes to allow them to escape the shitty home circumstances that we as a society won't lift a finger to sort?

My daughter is 9 and what she desperately needs is a lovely summer (and preferably Easter) where her parents can take her to some of the exciting places she has missed out on and she can play with friends.

I can confidently say that no class in my sixth form at least is significantly behind where they would have been otherwise.
 
Pope John XXIII said:
Help what?

Help them get closer to an arbitrarily set amount of knowledge needed for an arbitrarily set exam?

Not really. Whatever they add onto a school day in secondary has to be shared around 10-13 subjects. So it will make sod all difference to most. It will also kill off any booster or intervention classes for exam year groups. If we are teaching until 4 or 5pm anyway, we won't be able to offer additional group intervention for kids that need it like we do now.

Learning is the most exhausting thing you can do. The school day is a good length. It's the length it is for a reason. The last lesson of the day is always the least productive. Adding a couple of hours per day will bring about ever decreasing returns through exhaustion.

Maximum term length that children of all ages can manage well in my experience is 7 weeks. Any terms that go into an 8th week always see a massive decline in behaviour in the final two weeks. No one at the DFE would know that, because the vanishingly small number who have ever worked in a school have never worked in a real school.

The government also has the 1265 (I think that's the number) agreement with teachung unions. That limits the school year to 1,265 hours of directed time for teachers. This includes anything we are asked to do by our headteacher- lessons, supervisions, parents evenings, etc, but it doesn't include any of the additional hours we put in out of school for marking, preparation, phoning parents etc.

Most schools plan right to the edge of 1265. So, if the government wants to scrap holidays or extend the day they will have to shatter that. And I will happily go on strike over that, because it is the only workload safeguard we have..

Worth noting that many countries in the world have shorter days in school than us and almost all have longer holidays- much longer in most cases.

I always think it's important to avoid this horrific working class (and middle class) tendency to think it's a good thing to programme our children to be 60 hour a week working drones.

There is talk of going to the 5 term year as well. That basically means you have 8 weeks on, 2 weeks off all year with a month long summer. Djanogly City Academy used to do this. It has its pluses and minuses. You are only ever 8 weeks from a long holiday. But an 8 week term is a killer, and that eighth week doesn't see anything like the learning of week 1.

It also doesn't fit around bank holidays like the current holiday pattern does, so you actually end up with more holiday and less teaching time; currently every bank holiday other than mayday falls within half terms anyway.
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Thank you; that looks like a categorical NO
 
Pope John XXIII said:
To do what though?

It's important we move away from this idea that teachers are basically childcare. We are not. I know that wasn't your intention, but every media idea that just involves children spending more time with us without really considering what you want them doing effectively renders us as childcare.

I am a professional, graduate history teacher. What do you want me doing? I can teach an extra lesson with my class of a certain year group, no problem. I do that anyway with exam groups and have done throughout my career. But I can't really teach a class of multiple years. They need to be learning different things, and what would be the purpose other than to give Mr Williamson something he can claim makes him look good? What is the purpose and impact?

You still have 1265 to get around as well.

These random kids who "choose" to stay- who is choosing for them? Because the kids who need it won't want to, and neither will their parents.

You say they may need extra time away from home. That is very true. But how diseased are we as a society that we simply accept that and put no money or resources into trying to change that? Instead, we are prepared to put that money into schemes to allow them to escape the shitty home circumstances that we as a society won't lift a finger to sort?

My daughter is 9 and what she desperately needs is a lovely summer (and preferably Easter) where her parents can take her to some of the exciting places she has missed out on and she can play with friends.

I can confidently say that no class in my sixth form at least is significantly behind where they would have been otherwise.
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I assumed they would be behind in work. If they aren't there's no point in them being there, agreed.
 
i am a tree said:
I assumed they would be behind in work. If they aren't there's no point in them being there, agreed.
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Behind what though?

We make the assessments. We say whether they are behind or not.

Most over 40's I know have appalling literacy and not exactly sterling critical thinking skills. Yet will happily spout off about how useless their new apprentices are. God knows what standards must have been expected of school leavers when they got out of the system.

My classes are on track. Whether they remember stuff as well as if we had been face to face, I don't know yet. Does it matter whether they remember that Thomas Gresham was the man who re-negotiated King Edwards's Antwerp debts down to a lower interest rate than the emperor? Is it enough to know that the debts were renegotiated?
 
Pope John XXIII said:
Behind what though?

We make the assessments. We say whether they are behind or not.

Most over 40's I know have appalling literacy and not exactly sterling critical thinking skills. Yet will happily spout off about how useless their new apprentices are. God knows what standards must have been expected of school leavers when they got out of the system.

My classes are on track. Whether they remember stuff as well as if we had been face to face, I don't know yet. Does it matter whether they remember that Thomas Gresham was the man who re-negotiated King Edwards's Antwerp debts down to a lower interest rate than the emperor? Is it enough to know that the debts were renegotiated?
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Is this something about potatoes, or is it a trick question?
 
mao tse tung said:
Thank you; that looks like a categorical NO
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Pretty much

Gove expanded the curriculum in terms of knowledge content ten years ago. Under Labour, learning had been more about skills. My subject was very much about critical thinking, detecting bias, constructing argument.

Gove re-wrote the national curriculum for history himself in a weekend and declared that no year 7 could get by without knowing about Clive of India.

The whole curriculum now is jam packed full of facts they need to know. Bloke's I have literally never heard of and can find no information about appeared on the GCSE curriculum. I have people to teach about and I honestly can't tell kids why we need to learn about this person.

They called them "fat" GCSEs, although the history one is morbidly obese.

So my point is, if the kids have lost anything, it is a lack of being crammed full of facts that they will forget the second they leave the exam hall. Had we been cramming them with skills in the last 10 years they would have lost something more tangible, something that would have been worth spending the extra time developing.

That's my view anyway, having taught under both governments
 
Pope John XXIII said:
If you don't know this then you clearly aren't prepared to compete in the modern world against China
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Out of curiosity what would you do if anything? It's clearly been a hard 12 months for kids, in terms of learning and development and as usual those with the greatest need suffer the most.
 
Calvin Plummer said:
Out of curiosity what would you do if anything? It's clearly been a hard 12 months for kids, in terms of learning and development and as usual those with the greatest need suffer the most.
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Not being an elected minister I have the happy circumstance of being able to shoot holes in a ministers's plans from my own experiences without being encumbered with finding another solution.

I think the first thing to do is not jump in and assume anything needs to be done. I have taught loads of kids who have missed 2 or three years of education through awful circumstances and have, after a while, bounced back to be no different really than their peers. Some who were talented anyway have gone on to do exceptionally well.

I don't think we should panic into assuming huge sweeping changes need to happen as a result of this

Each new Key stage is pretty separate. A kid starting year 10 or year 7 is learning pretty much new things, and we can pick up week by week skills they need from the previous key stage that they lack. But we can only find those as we go; they are individual to each student. That is why a "cram them all into a summer school approach" won't work; all teachers can really do is teach them all the same thing and that won't be what they all need.

I can't talk at length about reforms we could make to schools to move them into the 21st century more and make them better because the reforms are worth doing anyway, but I would be cautious with any sweeping changes because of this.

Unless of course the government fancies a 1984 moment with the teaching unions.
 
I see some of the Great Barrington Declaration authors continue to spout nonsense. This time antivax. I presume Strett will be livid.

"They are peddling all sorts of anti-vaxx nonsense. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the authors of the GBD, wrote an Op-Ed in which he stated "For recovered Covid patients, the vaccines provide no benefit & some harm. It is thus unethical to vaccinate them." This is NOT true. 1/2
"
 
Pope John XXIII said:
An interesting read- the whole of Africa (1.3bn) has had fewer COVID deaths than the UK

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-in-africa-why-is-the-death-rate-so-low-12236347
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They did close the borders quite quickly. We were gearing up for our Zimbabwe project which has been delayed since last March. Obviously sucks but clearly was the right thing. 4 or 5 months later Uk still had open borders and goverment were starting to admit masks might be useful. Pff, sick really.
Coincidentally we have a 'xoom' tomorrow lunch about this very project so Im presuming changes are imminent. This time around my team will likely feel safer flying there than the UK now :)
 
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