It’s the end of term for most of you… well done, you survived! In today’s blog we look at how you found the final week of term, what might happen next, the Big Lockdown-Learning Parent Survey and family values.
You may have been flagging a bit toward the end…
There were home-learning tears in over half of Pingers’ homes last week. In most cases it was the child crying, but in over a third of cases it was you crying too. This was more common among those of you with younger kids, but it was also happening in households with older kids too.
This may be why only half of parents with primary-aged children reported that their kids complete all their schoolwork… a third just prioritise maths and English. In households with older kids the picture is slightly different, 78% of parents report their secondary-aged kids have completed all the work set.
Adding to all of this is the 55% of dads and 58% of mums who are working outside of normal office hours. Although this might be your normal working pattern, we expect that at least some work is due to spending time on home-learning during the day.
What’s going to happen next?
Whilst we don’t know what’s going to happen next, we do know what you would like to happen (or not happen)! First, we asked you if you thought it was a good idea for children to repeat a year… Whilst just over half of you thought this was a good idea, few of you wanted your own kids to repeat. The idea was far more popular with parents of primary-aged kids than secondary.
Then we asked what other “catch up” methods you would like. Unlike politicians’ and journalists’ recent suggestions, few of you wanted longer school days or shorter school holidays (although this was considerably more popular amongst parents of primary-aged children). Instead, the most popular answer by some way was an increased focus on socialisation and mental well-being. Obviously, these things aren’t mutually exclusive, but let’s hope parents’ views are considered by those planning what happens next.
Update
Lots of the home-learning questions you’ve answered in the past week (and therefore lots of the findings reported in this blog) have been for our project looking at learning while schools are closed to most children for the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF).
Thanks to the EEF, 5 lucky Pingers have also won a Chrome Book! The competition continues throughout half-term so look out for a notification in the app in case you are a winner too!
And also...
On Saturday we asked about values. Kindness was the top value, particularly amongst mums.
On Sunday we asked about rules. The most popular amongst all of you (mums and dads, parents of older kids and younger) was ‘treat people and property with respect.’
Around half of you write down or discuss rules and values. This led to an interesting discussion on social media & some of you sharing some lovely examples.
Coming up next week
Whilst it may be half-term for most of you next week, the Parent Ping questions will continue! We’ll be asking you to reflect on this term of lockdown-learning but we will also have questions about other aspects of family life. Did you know you can get involved by suggesting questions too? Send us your ideas for questions or daily reads by getting in touch via the app.
Your answers matter more than ever! Don’t miss a question… Download the app and set your notifications to PING every day!