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Re-opening Schools?

Edie said:
The absolute fucking shambles of my kids school continues. One year being sent home at a time due to lack of staff but no online teaching offered, and the work set is just PowerPoints in a folder that no one even bothers to check if they’ve done.

Meanwhile get sent home the report. What an absolute waste of time. He’s Year 11 (GCSE year). For 3 out of 9 subjects his Target Grade is below his Actual Grade. For Computer Science his target is 4 and his actual grade is 9. Then the bollocks letter that accompanies it says ‘Targets are aspirational and have been reviewed at the start of this term’.

So they’re aspiring for my lad to underachieve. The fucking dicks.

Then the other thing that’s massively pissing me off is in the “Attitude to Learning” score (note, this used to be called Effort back in the day) my lad consistently gets the following ‘drop down box’ entry:
“Expectations met most of the time”.

What the FUCK does that even mean? I’ll tell you what it means in plain English. It means he’s lazy. But instead of saying that, and saying ‘Hey kid, you need to pull your socks up son cos you can achieve more’ the kid gets the impression that it doesn’t matter according to school, and Mum is just nagging at home.

Low aspirations plus a school system that ignores lazy boys plus covid plus an emphasis on food parcels not education. Recipe for underachievement.
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If they had enough staff to do online teaching they'd not be sending kids home for lack of staff.
 
SpookyFrank said:
If they had enough staff to do online teaching they'd not be sending kids home for lack of staff.
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Bollocks. One teacher can teach more than one class online. It is:
1. Primarily poor management
2. A targets culture set by Labour, with added bollocks like ‘flight paths’ and ‘attitudes to learning’ and drop down boxes rather than sentences in plain English
3. Only caring about ‘value added’ by the school not my actual kid, cos he’s already getting higher than he ‘should’ and above a 4 they don’t give a fuck cos the school will look good already
4. Laziness by some individuals
5. and added Covid food poverty caused by the Tories which means it’s more like a food bank than a school.
 
Edie said:
Bollocks. One teacher can teach more than one class online. It is:
1. Primarily poor management
2. A targets culture set by Labour, with added bollocks like ‘flight paths’ and ‘attitudes to learning’ and drop down boxes rather than sentences in plain English
3. Only caring about ‘value added’ by the school not my actual kid, cos he’s already getting higher than he ‘should’ and above a 4 they don’t give a fuck cos the school will look good already
4. Laziness by some individuals
5. and added Covid food poverty caused by the Tories which means it’s more like a food bank than a school.
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How did labour set these targets when they haven't been in government for a decade? I'm led to believe the Tories haven't been entirely hands off with education over that period
 
Some of New Labours disgusting failures were related to target culture but yet, they didnt start that fire, they were just happy to expand its reach.

Parents have every right to get upset with the failings and priorities of educational institutions, and as usual the terrible pandemic circumstances are mostly magnifying problems that were always there.

There is no point blaming teachers for the pandemic-related problems. That would be like blaming nurses for non-Covid NHS care being cancelled in the pandemic.
 
Edie said:
Bollocks. One teacher can teach more than one class online. It is:
1. Primarily poor management
2. A targets culture set by Labour, with added bollocks like ‘flight paths’ and ‘attitudes to learning’ and drop down boxes rather than sentences in plain English
3. Only caring about ‘value added’ by the school not my actual kid, cos he’s already getting higher than he ‘should’ and above a 4 they don’t give a fuck cos the school will look good already
4. Laziness by some individuals
5. and added Covid food poverty caused by the Tories which means it’s more like a food bank than a school.
Click to expand...
Absolute cack.

Teaching online effectively is really, really challenging. Universities are struggling with it and they have a head start on schools, more resources and students that are paying to attend.
As others have pointed out a targets culture has been pushed - against the advice and wishes of the teachers you are attacking.- for decades.
Teachers are probably using drop down boxes for comments because that's all the time they've been given for assessment.
 
redsquirrel said:
Teachers are probably using drop down boxes for comments because that's all the time they've been given for assessment.
Click to expand...

In the days before drop down boxes there were other techniques that amounted to much the same result anyway. The endless quest for euphemisms to soften the message and make it safe, the mission to find something positive to sugar coat aspects of whats being said etc. A decrease in imaginitive touches and originality as ploughing through the mountain of paperwork reached the moment of maximum tedium.
 
S☼I said:
Yeah. Teachers are shit, fuck them. They do it on purpose you know
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Are you lazy? If no, then the above doesn’t apply to you.

My sons Maths teacher, his GCSE Maths teacher, set work for him for 6 WEEKS without checking whether he’d done any of it. Without contacting me to tell me he’d done nothing. This is whilst she’s “working from home”. When I actually chased her and asked if he was in fact submitting work, she says yes he is. When I challenged her and said ‘please send it back to me so I can see it’ it turns out he had done hardly nothing and she hadn’t even been bothered to check.

That my friend is laziness.
 
redsquirrel said:
Absolute cack.

Teaching online effectively is really, really challenging. Universities are struggling with it and they have a head start on schools, more resources and students that are paying to attend.
As others have pointed out a targets culture has been pushed - against the advice and wishes of the teachers you are attacking.- for decades.
Teachers are probably using drop down boxes for comments because that's all the time they've been given for assessment.
Click to expand...
I don’t gaf. It’s not good enough.

Think about my son. Write a single sentence in grammatical English that reflects his achievement and effort. And don’t ever give me a drop down response again.

It doesn’t even make sense ffs. How can in Computer Science his Target be 4, his most recent mock Grade be 9, and his Attitude be “meets expectations most of the time”????

If he’s exceeding your fucking target by 5 grades then he’s not meeting your expectations ‘most of the time’ you fucking chopstick, he’s exceeding them all the time.
 
Edie said:
Read up on

Read up about New Labour.
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You do post some awful bollocks trying to relate the problems of today to the government of 1997-2010. It's frankly pitiful to see. It's pitiful to see no word of the great decline in funding for schools over the past decade, for example. Education spending fall from 2010 to now was worst since 1970s – IFS

No mention of the Tory decision to drive schools to become academies and remove them from local authority control

No mention of the upheaval caused by incessant changes in government policy. As the headmaster in 'if...' points out, education in Britain is a nubile Cinderella, scantily clad and much interfered with.

I don't much care for the labour party. But blaming them for the predicament of education more than a decade after they left office, after everything done under Cameron, under may, under Johnson - it's just ridiculous.
 
elbows said:
In the days before drop down boxes there were other techniques that amounted to much the same result anyway. The endless quest for euphemisms to soften the message and make it safe, the mission to find something positive to sugar coat aspects of whats being said etc. A decrease in imaginitive touches and originality as ploughing through the mountain of paperwork reached the moment of maximum tedium.
Click to expand...
Exactly this. Call a spade a spade for fuck sake, and let’s actually push our kids (especially our lads) to do better.
 
elbows said:
In the days before drop down boxes there were other techniques that amounted to much the same result anyway. The endless quest for euphemisms to soften the message and make it safe, the mission to find something positive to sugar coat aspects of whats being said etc. A decrease in imaginitive touches and originality as ploughing through the mountain of paperwork reached the moment of maximum tedium.
Click to expand...

Imagine the fuss if a kid actually got sent home with 'lazy' on his report.
 
Edie said:
Meanwhile get sent home the report. What an absolute waste of time. He’s Year 11 (GCSE year). For 3 out of 9 subjects his Target Grade is below his Actual Grade. For Computer Science his target is 4 and his actual grade is 9. Then the bollocks letter that accompanies it says ‘Targets are aspirational and have been reviewed at the start of this term’.

So they’re aspiring for my lad to underachieve. The fucking dicks.
Click to expand...

Targets are set in year 7 based on a combination of SATS and CATS scores (usually). When schools say that they are aspirational, it will be because the school has added one or two grades to the grade by which the school will be judged nationally. Most schools add a grade or two (hence the "aspirational" bit). It's not a perfect system and some children end up with target grades that are too high, others with target grades that are too low in at least some of their subjects.

It is weird that they say they have reviewed the targets and not put them up if he's already 5 grades above - it would make no difference to them either way really if he's already beating the baseline target.

Good news for his school though if he's making that much progress. It's unusual for targets to be that wrong. Great that your boy is doing so well despite the challenges.
 
Pickman's model said:
You do post some awful bollocks trying to relate the problems of today to the government of 1997-2010. It's frankly pitiful to see. It's pitiful to see no word of the great decline in funding for schools over the past decade, for example. Education spending fall from 2010 to now was worst since 1970s – IFS

No mention of the Tory decision to drive schools to become academies and remove them from local authority control

No mention of the upheaval caused by incessant changes in government policy. As the headmaster in 'if...' points out, education in Britain is a nubile Cinderella, scantily clad and much interfered with.

I don't much care for the labour party. But blaming them for the predicament of education more than a decade after they left office, after everything done under Cameron, under may, under Johnson - it's just ridiculous.
Click to expand...
Do you have kids at State school? Do you work at a State school? Did you even attend a State school? If not then fuck off.
 
Why wish for them to write anything or tick any boxes if you think his mock result on its own should dictate the rest of their evaluation? I wouldnt expect all of those measures to be in perfect harmony.
 
So Edie your argument is that teachers, who on average were were already working excessive hours pre-COVID, should give up even more of their free-time to give extra feedback to your son - and everyone else's kid.

There are major problems with education system at all levels but virtually none of it is the fault of workers.

EDIT: Oh and they should do this while also moving their lessons online.
 
Edie said:
Do you have kids at State school? Do you work at a State school? Did you even attend a State school? If not then fuck off.
Click to expand...

If we are going to exclude people from the discussion based on experience and merit then I'd kick you out for a start, thinking Johnson & Co were going to do a fine job of handling the pandemic and that we should trust their approach, that worked out well didnt it!
 
Edie said:
Do you have kids at State school? Do you work at a State school? Did you even attend a State school? If not then fuck off.
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feeble

on this basis no one in any Tory cabinet since 2010 should be making education policy. Yet they are. And you ignore their considerable contribution to the state of education in this country today to blame a former administration which has been out of office more than ten years
 
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gaijingirl said:
Targets are set in year 7 based on a combination of SATS and CATS scores (usually). When schools say that they are aspirational, it will be because the school has added one or two grades to the grade by which the school will be judged nationally. Most schools add a grade or two (hence the "aspirational" bit). It's not a perfect system and some children end up with target grades that are too high, others with target grades that are too low in at least some of their subjects.

It is weird that they say they have reviewed the targets and not put them up if he's already 5 grades above - it would make no difference to them either way really if he's already beating the baseline target.

Good news for his school though if he's making that much progress. It's unusual for targets to be that wrong. Great that your boy is doing so well despite the challenges.
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Then I’m sorry but this system is absolutely ridiculous. It’s all about the school and fuck all about the kids.
 
Edie said:
Then I’m sorry but this system is absolutely ridiculous. It’s all about the school and fuck all about the kids.
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Most teachers are not fans of the way that target grades are calculated either - not least because whether or not we receive pay rises rests on us also meeting targets based on such a poorly functioning system.

Most teachers (I know) also really really care about the kids. I'm sorry that your experience has been so rubbish. Actually I would say all the teachers I know - especially these days.
 
Edie said:
Are you lazy? If no, then the above doesn’t apply to you.

My sons Maths teacher, his GCSE Maths teacher, set work for him for 6 WEEKS without checking whether he’d done any of it. Without contacting me to tell me he’d done nothing. This is whilst she’s “working from home”. When I actually chased her and asked if he was in fact submitting work, she says yes he is. When I challenged her and said ‘please send it back to me so I can see it’ it turns out he had done hardly nothing and she hadn’t even been bothered to check.

That my friend is laziness.
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I used to see a lot of "lazy" kids in my schools counsellor role. The effort that they usually put into their laziness was quite remarkable.
 
Edie said:
Are you lazy? If no, then the above doesn’t apply to you.

My sons Maths teacher, his GCSE Maths teacher, set work for him for 6 WEEKS without checking whether he’d done any of it. Without contacting me to tell me he’d done nothing. This is whilst she’s “working from home”. When I actually chased her and asked if he was in fact submitting work, she says yes he is. When I challenged her and said ‘please send it back to me so I can see it’ it turns out he had done hardly nothing and she hadn’t even been bothered to check.

That my friend is laziness.
Click to expand...
So when your kid's teacher supposedly doesn't check they've submitted their homework, you call it laziness.

What do you call it when a parent doesn't check?
 
The systems usually are ridiculous. At their worst they are grade machines and it takes all the efforts of staff who care to make them more than that.

Individual personal failings are a part of the picture but one that pales in comparison to the institutional failures, failure to have the right priorities etc.

I lost almost a whole year of education at a state school once, due to a teacher that was having profound mental health problems and the attitudes of that school at the time to protect its staff at all costs. The shit really hit the fan when my dad was what work I had done that year, and the fact I had added answers to questions that didnt exist and the teacher had ticked them.

I dont think I've ever been the same since, I was about 10 at the time and I developed more than a passing curiosity in regards institutional failings and the people that are failed as a result, that has never left me. Rarely does a day go by without further examples to reinforce that view of this stupid, broken, half-arsed country that repeatedly wonders how come we do so badly, with wide eyed naivety every bloody time.
 
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