School lockdown – As a teacher, I’ve returned to class; as a parent, I won’t send my daughter back to school
Our experience of homeschooling went downhill when school opened up to more pupils – my child was quickly forgotten…
- by Anonymous
When a place opened up for my daughter at the school where I work, I was immediately faced with a series of dilemmas. Would she grow to resent my presence in her school? Would I be faced with awkward conversations were she to do something wrong?
Perhaps most importantly, how would I deal with decisions made by the school that I didn’t believe were in her best interests? I didn’t expect that it would be less than a full term before this last question came to prominence.
My priorities as a parent and as a teacher are quite different, and this has left me making a number of decisions that sit uncomfortably with my role. None more so than the decision not to send my daughter back to a Reception bubble while, at the same time, I returned to teach in Y6.
A few eyebrows were raised among staff but broadly they all understood why: school wasn’t safe, and we had all seen it first-hand when looking after keyworker bubbles.
Younger pupils were not able to socially distance, and very little was being done to enforce it. We heard stories of children going round each other’s houses and saw families breaking social distancing rules the moment they were out the school gates.
From the meetings and risk assessments, not a lot had been done to make things any safer for the broader reopening for Reception, Y1 and Y6.
There would simply be more children crowded into the school. At home we’d rigorously taught and enforced strict hygiene and social distancing rules, and I wasn’t prepared for this to be undone in school. It felt like a contradiction to be heading back to work myself. Some other teachers did not return because they didn’t feel safe and I sympathised with them. After all, most of the rules we are currently instructed to follow in the outside world are unworkable in school.
However, it was also clear that my Y6s would be far more able to maintain a respectful distance – if still not two metres – than the younger children.
We were lucky that our circumstances made this decision practical: our second daughter was born on the day lockdown was enforced. This meant my wife was at home and free from the burden of salaried work and could homeschool our first daughter.
However, our experience of homeschooling went dramatically downhill when the school opened up to more children. Those not returning to school were seemingly quickly forgotten by their teachers as they took up their new bubbles.
Work sent in to my daughter’s teachers was no longer being responded to and the work being set was clearly written as plans for other teachers to follow, not for parents at home.
The response to my polite complaints were that we chose to keep her out of school so what did we expect? We did not expect for her teachers to cut the official communication channels.
My daughter’s teachers were certainly not alone in holding this attitude. The return of children to bubbles allowed us to get back into a comfort zone of coming in and teaching the children in front of us: for the rest at home, including my daughter, out of sight was out of mind.
We teachers are very sensitive to criticism. This is probably because so much of it is unfounded, but we need to accept that many of us (not all) have not done a good enough job with home learning, particularly in motivating parents and children to do it.
I’m sure most parents have struggled with motivating children to work, but it was when my wife questioned ‘why we bother’ as she looked on Tapestry at three weeks of unmarked work that it became clear how important motivation has been for adults as well.
There has definitely been a sense of muddle-through and make-do in my school. Broadly, I have towed the line and kept my contributions to the point, but tensions have been raised.
We are now facing a time where many families, including my own, who chose to keep their children at home, are being forced to return.
They will come with a different, more cautious, more frightened attitude to school.
This brings a whole new set of problems as those same nervous parents, who were blissfully ignorant, will now experience the school-gate rule-breakers for themselves and ask why the school is doing nothing about it.
I will be joining them.
The writer is a Y6 primary teacher in Essex.
