Reality of delivering Alternative Edn Provisions

As educators around the world face the likely scenario of educating children while the majority of children won’t be physically at school, here is the reality of what PRIMARY school educators are facing. Models for Alternative Education Provisions (Learning at Home/ Home schooling) are often based in the model that children, all children, will be at home. The current climate indicates that we are likely to have children learning at home and some children will be still attending school. This is not an either or, rather an and.

Let’s address who will be coming to school: children of essential workers, according to the Prime Minister, are welcome to send their children to schools. Schools will remain open! And essential workers are those people that have a job and they can work from either home or work. So, there will be parents working from home and who may choose to send their children to work, so they can do their job at home. (It does beg the question – should parents working from home send their children to work, and effectively put others at risk, when we should be isolating?) Without answering the question, teachers have to accept that there will be children at school. And teachers are very willing to educate children at school especially the children of our front-line respondents who are managing the pandemic effect.

So there will be children at school and children at home – all deserving of their education to continue. In reality the time we can expect the children to be engaged in learning the curriculum as set by the teachers, will be between 2-3 hours per day.

I can imagine some people may be wondering why we can’t expect 5-6 hours as children do at school. Learning at school is very different from learning at home.

May I address the reality of each setting: home and school.

At home children will need the support, guidance and facilitation of caring others, ideally their parents. Now in the current climate some parents may be working from home. Other parents may be unemployed. Other parents may be homebodies who now have the company of their children for more hours per day than they are use to. At home there may be distractions that make formalised learning challenging including siblings, pets, screens, food, toys. Then there needs to be a space which may accommodate the children’s learning. As the teachers will be delivering the curriculum on-line, access to the relevant technology is important. Some families may not have devices for the children and may rely on the children using their parents’ devices. At home there may be some parents who don’t feel competent or confident to facilitate and guide their children’s learning.

So there is reality at home.

Let’s flick settings and move to school where there may be a handful of children or many children – students who deserve to continue to learn.

Allow me to set the scene at school.

Students will arrive and probably be grouped in multi-age groups, assuming there is less than a half a class per year level in attendance. (I choose that number as a guide to suggest that if there is a minimum of half a class per year level, then they would be grouped as a single year level., and ‘taught’ by a teacher of their year level). Children will be supervised before school by a teacher. School routines are likely to be maintained and hence students will move to a room to commence learning. The students will be ‘taught’ by a teacher, ideally with the support of some School Officers (Teacher Aides). The ‘teaching’ will be of the content that the teachers had sent home. Now some students may bring their devices on which they can work. Other students may not have devices, especially the younger students. Teachers may or may not be familiar with the content that they have before them.

Now the teachers ‘teaching’ the students should also be practising social distancing. And the space in which the children are being supervised also need to be structured to support social distancing. Both these issues make ‘teaching’ difficult. Ask yourself – how does a teacher give individual guidance to a child from a ‘safe’ distance of a minimum of 1.5metres?

The teachers who will be ‘teaching’ the students may be ‘teaching’ for a session, anywhere between 1-2 hours. This implies that the teachers may be on a roster to ‘teach’ the children. There may be some teachers who may or may not feel comfortable ‘teaching’ students, which, in their opinion, could be jeopardising their health and the health of their own family.

At each lunch break the children will be supervised by other teachers. They will be ‘playing’ games, practising social distancing, discouraged from touching or sharing equipment. This makes ‘playing’ rather challenging.

During the ‘teaching’, teachers are only expecting the children at school to attend to learning for similar time as the students at home. Working on the basis that the children at home for approximately 2-3 hours, and attending in small bite size pieces, the students at school will do similar.

So that begs the question: What happens during the other 2-3 hours of each day for the students at school? What ‘work’ will they be doing? Who will prepare that work? Who will provide the resources for that work?

There are other complexities in what will happen at school.

Cleaning and disinfecting protocols will need to be increased to accommodate the presence of staff and students on site, in an effort to minimise the chance for the spread of any germs. But who takes on the additional cleaning responsibilities? And when does this additional cleaning happen – each lunch break by school officers?? And what happens if, and when, staff decline to either supervise students or clean resources? Does this add more pressure to staff who are willing to oblige in accommodating the needs of the students at school?

Teachers at school will be “checking in” with their students, ideally on a daily basis. They will be uploading curriculum content to the relevant platforms, allowing the students, and carers, to access the content.

When teachers “check in” with their students at home, the teachers have limited influence over the environment in which the student will be sitting. The teacher will ensure they are working and presenting from a professional environment.

During the Alternative Education Provision, teachers will also have time for professional development, training, providing feedback to students. Teachers will have time to complete planning, to record the adjustments (especially those adjustments in support of National Consistency Collection of Data (NCCD)).

This explains the models for students and partially rationalises the model for teachers working at school. There will be a percentage of teachers working from home, especially those who fall in the high risk categories: Over the age of 60 with co-morbid medical conditions; immuno-compromised people, pregnant people; people with serious health issues including respiratory issues, cancer. What does it mean for these teachers and their students? As a school leader, I have had teachers persuade me as to their ability to deliver the curriculum, provide feedback, plan collaboratively with their colleagues. They have displayed a willingness to attend planning sessions facilitated by curriculum leaders; attend work to fulfil their supervision duties. These staff may not meet the criteria however they have legitimate reasons for wishing to work from home (health-compromised relatives is the most common reason).

Then there are those staff that meet criteria and who can fulfil their job from the safety of home. These staff, teachers, can fulfil their responsibilities except for supervision. Of course, the staff working from home decreases the number of staff available for supervision. By default, this means that those staff on site have to take on additional responsibilities. And this is just the teachers. Can you imagine what meaningful work the school officers can do from home, while remaining safe and healthy? There are only so many sight word charts that can be prepared and laminated.

As the current climate may dictate that a significant number of children will be remaining home from school at the start of term 2, for an indefinite period, the complexities are vast and numerous. Teachers have an obligation to keep providing high quality education for all children, be they at home or at school. School leaders have an obligation to ensure the safety of their staff. The Alternative Education Provision provides opportunities for staff and students. We can do this. We will do this. Let’s trust each other; collaborate with parents and teachers; and ask relevant questions when we need to clarify. This is the pandemic effect on education. This is the reality of delivering Alternative Education Provisions.