It’s hard to write a blog when the facts change all the time! Daily polling is helpful in a fast-moving situation, but not when the situation moves as fast as it has in this past week!
🗓️ On the 1st of January, we asked who was going back to school (6% of parents with primary-aged kids were planning to keep their kids home regardless of their school being open)
🗓️ On the 3rd of January, we asked if you had heard from your child’s school or nursery about any new Covid safety measures in place for the spring term (around half of you had)
🗓️ On the 4th of January, we asked if you agreed with the statement ‘I wouldn’t mind (physical) school closures, as long as I have notice to prepare’ (three-quarters of you agreed). At 8pm that day Boris Johnson closed schools 🤦♀️
It’s not a surprise that 90% of you think that in relation to schools’ policy, the Government’s response to Covid-19 has been ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’.
BUT we don’t let that deter us at ParentPing! Here’s what we know so far about how home-schooling is going (and a few other fun facts besides!)
During lockdown, sharing parents’ voices & experiences is vital. Lots of claims are being made about what “parents think” but without your responses it’s all just anecdote! Please share this link & tell other people why they should download Parent Ping - https://bit.ly/parentping
Home schooling so far…
Of those of you that will have to juggle work and home-school, three-quarters anticipate that your employer will be supportive or very supportive (we’ll check back in a few weeks to see if this is still the case).
At the start of the week most of you were feeling relatively optimistic about home-school and felt that it was going to be better than last time, especially secondary parents. We’ll also be regularly checking on this to see if it changes.
The early indications are that lockdown learning will be a lot more structured this time around… you told us that 90% of secondary students have been provided with a full timetable of lessons each day. Whilst the figure is lower for primary children, it’s still well over half who have their day planned out for them.
And because parenting isn’t just about schooling…
This week we also found out:
1 in 5 dads have returned some of their Christmas presents (or plan to)
56% of you would have to look up the answer to a question about fronted adverbials (46% would have to look up the answer about the bar method of maths)
Two-thirds of primary parents would sleep if they were child free for 24 hours! Parents of secondary-aged kids were more ‘outgoing’ with the top child-free activity being an outing closely followed by a trip to a restaurant. Well, we can dream can’t we!
Coming up next week
We will have more questions about home-schooling and the support you need. Let us know if you have a question by completing this form. Don’t miss a question… Download the app and set your notifications to PING every day!