Coronavirus

[duncs500]

I'm ruining her life she told me today even though she finished at 2.30 and has gone down the beech !

[Carlos]

@Carlos My Yr10 15 year old gets 3 hours of work per day on average

That's interesting to hear and inline with one of my colleagues son who's in a different school.

Today was typical, 3.5 hours but an hour of that I sat with her doing Maths and another hour she had a science tutor for support and even then there was another task left which would probably take her at least an hour on her own.

[Ascender]

My 14 year old has worked really hard and seems quite happy to be getting assignments via the app and getting on with them in his own time. My wife is giving him some extra maths tuition though. 3-5 hours per day depending on subjects sounds about right although he's now only got to focus on subjects he's getting next year so that's reduce the load a lot.

My 12 year old daughter is much harder work, but you know, wimmin...

I'm surprised the schools haven't been using Zoom to try and get some virtual class time in small groups though.

[Mito Man]

I heard some teacher on the radio saying you can homeschool your kid for just 2 hours a day as when you subtract the activities, breaks, lunch, PE etc a kid only gets 2 hours of lessons a day
No wonder they all aspire to be vloggers

[Carlos]

I've spoken to the school about that and I get the impression they are concerned about being able to see in the home. They are being vague and not stating welfare or privacy as a reason just that they have been advised not to do it.

[jamcg]

I'm surprised the schools haven't been using Zoom to try and get some virtual class time in small groups though.

Scouts suspended face to face activities in the UK before the schools were shut, we’ve been doing meetings on a Tuesday night over zoom for 11 weeks now, as have 90% of groups in the country, and we’ve still managed to set badgework that the kids will receive badges for once we can meet again. Not sure why teachers couldn’t do the same, even if it’s just so kids can ask questions about an assignment or receive feedback

[RobYob]

I heard some teacher on the radio saying you can homeschool your kid for just 2 hours a day as when you subtract the activities, breaks, lunch, PE etc a kid only gets 2 hours of lessons a day

Teachers are similarly frustrated that in between needless admin and being defacto wardens to kids who desperately need to be in special needs schools they actual get to "teach" as they are supposed to for a few hours a day.

Mrs spent yesterday evening donating her time to digesting three dozen pages of rules for the new-era of distanced "teaching". She gets a few p above minimum wage and with all the unpaid OT would be far below it. Well rewarded occupation for dealing with others "precious" brats for hours a day.

[Nefarious]

It says it’s a £400k contract. I can definitely understand not going out to tender though if you have a company you know delivers results. It would end up taking weeks/months to go through a tender process.

As for the other points - yep.

1) It's one of a series of contract, not all of which have had their value disclosed. Of those which have been disclosed, the total to Faculty alone is £1.6m. I've seen estimate for the total at over £4m. That total doesn't include the value of the data afterwards, which is retained by Faculty.
2) There is a proven off-the-shelf Apple/Google alternative if time-to-market is the only consideration
3) Personally, I'd love to be in a position to award myself multimillion contracts from public funds and defend it with "yeah, it was easier that way". It's not, or should not be, how public institutions work. The need for expediency should not be an excuse for dishing out contracts willy-nilly to MPs own companies, Tory party donors and Brexit supporters (Deloitte, Dyson, Serco etc etc)

Oh, and Rev, what's the use of credit score reports?

[Rich B]

It says it’s a £400k contract. I can definitely understand not going out to tender though if you have a company you know delivers results. It would end up taking weeks/months to go through a tender process.

As for the other points - yep.

1) It's one of a series of contract, not all of which have had their value disclosed. Of those which have been disclosed, the total to Faculty alone is £1.6m. I've seen estimate for the total at over £4m. That total doesn't include the value of the data afterwards, which is retained by Faculty.

So still not multi million pound contracts, unless you use your magic source estimate.

[teacherboy]

I'm one of the idiots who has to administer and mark the work - I've even taken on an extra KS3 class that my colleagues should be teaching between them and mark that work every week. KS3 is project based every week - some is great and some is shite but I try to find the positives in my feedback to them and make them feel good about what they've done.....

I estimate that i've marked over 50% of total work submitted from the pupils I "teach" overall - for KS4 I have invested many hours into changing work to be more home appropriate, made exam questions to test knowledge (they self assess these), scoured youtube for videos, found virtual practical activities and generally gave it a bloody good go to mix it up a little.

A-Level is powerpoint for information, they have a textbook at home to support that and I find/make whatever worksheets and exam questions I can and same as KS4 in terms of virtual practicals, suitable videos etc.

It's much much harder than being at school where you have the interaction and can assess on the spot for understanding - the marking alone via google classroom and email submissions takes a whole day for year 7 and whole day for year 8 as scrolling through and adding comments to their work takes ages - 4x longer than pen and paper easily.

My school are planning on returning on 15th June for a maximum of 60 pupils on site at any one time - 10% of full capacity! Days will run from 8.30am to 1pm and school will be open monday - thursday with friday reserved for cleaning more thoroughly than just what will be done after school and via pupils wiping desks etc.

Huge ball-ache for everyone involved and I personally would prefer the security of working from home but recognise that the economy has to be kickstarted before it all goes totally to ratshit and that with the severe measures my school are putting in place it should be safe for me - although I do have to have permission from my GP in order allay fears my school has about my underlying health conditions and any extra risks that they may pose (replacement mechanical heart valve, mitral valve annuloplasty, aortic root replacement and the cocktail of beta blockers and warfarin I take to stop clots forming)

[Carlos]

As a teaching 'professional' do you think the current yr10s can get through the syllabus for 10 GCSEs after losing the best part of half a years teaching ?

ETA- as regards the heart thing, I've had bigger wounds on my foreskin and I'm not banging on about it but pleased to hear you've made a full recovery.

[NotoriousREV]

Oh, and Rev, what's the use of credit score reports?

Nowhere in that report does it mention using credit score reports. It says “credit reference agency data” which can include identity verification. You can see these types of searches showing as “ID Check” on your credit report. For example, Experian provides this service for Gov.uk.

[teacherboy]

As a teaching 'professional' do you think the current yr10s can get through the syllabus for 10 GCSEs after losing the best part of half a years teaching ?

ETA- as regards the heart thing, I've had bigger wounds on my foreskin and I'm not banging on about it but pleased to hear you've made a full recovery.

We went into this with the expectation that they would stick to more or less the same timetable but some year 10 pupils have done f-all, been chased by head of year etc. but they do not give a rats! Those that have kept up as much as possible will be ok and we'll finish the syllabus in time for revision to start around late feb/early march as we did with the year 11's this year.

As in all areas of life - those that want to get on, are getting on - there have been a few whinges around work format and expectations of time spent doing it but 60 - 70% of the year have done the best that they can, rest of them will moan when they don't get good grades or can't answer exam questions etc. and there is limited time to fix those problems that they in effect brought on themselves.

One way or another we'll make it work the best we can but when the results are in next year and they turn out to be rubbish then we'll inevitably get the blame for one reason or another....... as soon as covid-19 is all done we'll be back to being whipped by the media again no doubt

[NotoriousREV]

My 15 year old did complain early on that it wasn’t fair because those that enjoy doing schoolwork would get ahead versus people like him that would rather be doing anything else. He didn’t make it very far with that argument

[Carlos]

It's the same for them all so as you say, broadly speaking the order of achievement won't change much but I am more concerned about that year and yr 12 being behind at the big jump point to further education.

I'll just keep the nagging up

[V8Granite]

I gave up trying to do the school work, I left that to Treina as she is more patient than me.

I took him to the garage and taught mechanical advantage with pulleys, matchstick rockets, levers, how ships float, using a crimping tool, making a big hotel, using small power tools etc.

I found it easier and more fun for them aswell as learning something practical. I think this will be a huge learning issue for anyone who lacks any drive.

Dave!

[Nefarious]

It says it’s a £400k contract. I can definitely understand not going out to tender though if you have a company you know delivers results. It would end up taking weeks/months to go through a tender process.

As for the other points - yep.

1) It's one of a series of contract, not all of which have had their value disclosed. Of those which have been disclosed, the total to Faculty alone is £1.6m. I've seen estimate for the total at over £4m. That total doesn't include the value of the data afterwards, which is retained by Faculty.

So still not multi million pound contracts, unless you use your magic source estimate.

Not multi-million? Only a fraction have been disclosed yet (we're still waiting for the national audit office report, as the government is failing to follow its own transparency guidelines on publishing the details), but government published documents show a total of 177 contracts awarded since 26 March with a total value of £1.1bn, of which 115 were awarded under the emergency non-tendering process, with a total value of "just over £1bn". We have no idea of the value of the Deloitte, KPMG, Serco, Sodexo, Mitie, Boots or Palantir contracts yet.

Rev - what is the need for all the high-level, multi-source ID verification for a contract tracing app that's supposed to be anonymous?

[Rich B]

Oh, you’re expanding beyond the article you had an issue with now. Cool.

[Nefarious]

Oh, you’re expanding beyond the article you had an issue with now. Cool.

No, I stated in my original post that I have an issue with the widespread practice of dishing out high value contracts to companies with close connections to government without proper tender, of which this is a prime example.

This does seem a slightly strange, nit-picky point (and one largely irrelevant to the issue of awarding a high-value, privicy invading contract to close associates of the current cabinet) to make a stand over.

[Rich B]

Oh, you’re expanding beyond the article you had an issue with now. Cool.

No, I stated in my original post that I have an issue with the widespread practice of dishing out high value contracts to companies with close connections to government without proper tender, of which this is a prime example.

This does seem a slightly strange, nit-picky point (and one largely irrelevant to the issue of awarding a high-value, privicy invading contract to close associates of the current cabinet) to make a stand over.

well it’s inflammatory isn’t it. The article you quoted referenced one £400k contract that was awarded without tender, but you’re saying there’s multi-million pound contracts Being awarded that way. I’m not saying there isn’t but surely If you’re going to reference one, then reference the others too.