Help! My child is learning from home!
Many parents are worried about their youngsters’ education now that the majority are learning from home. Thanks to tireless efforts by teachers, they needn’t be
When it was announced on January 5th that schools across the country would only be staying open to children of critical workers and vulnerable children, the majority of parents gave a collective shudder. After all, having children is challenging enough at the best of times, but when they’re at home all day, every day, and you have to supervise their education, it’s almost impossible. As father-of-two Errol Murray, from Leeds, says: “There’s a reason that teaching is a paid profession. The idea of taking care of children and getting an idea into their heads at the same time as working a full-time job is very difficult, and to achieve this with no training is basically a non-starter.” No wonder many parents were worried about the impact of the closure on their child’s education and academic progress. However, since the March 2020 lockdown, schools have improved hugely the remote learning opportunities they provide for students. First time round — like everyone else — they were caught by surprise, and had to rapidly develop strategies to help educate children at home.
By this January, schools were better prepared. Janey Cooksley, headteacher of Briar Hill Primary School in Northampton, and her team had spent months creating a full academic year’s worth of booklets covering all the academic subjects for years one to six. “By September 1, they were all preloaded on to Google Classroom. For those children who had online access, everything was ready and for those who didn’t, hard copies of the booklets could be posted out,” says Janey.
So when the majority of children had to learn from home in January 2021, all Janey’s pupils, and those in the 22 other primaries in her trust, could immediately benefit. “As well as the booklets, we have teacher videos or voiceovers that help explain the lessons and tasks, and our teachers and teaching assistants have weekly calls with each family to check in and see how everyone is coping. It’s our moral duty.”
Each school is doing things slightly differently, with some providing between three to five hours of lessons a day for pupils.
Most record the lessons which are later available to pupils, while teachers are on hand to answer any questions or help with any difficulties.
And schools are now being supported by the EdTech demonstrator school and college network, which involves experts helping them get the best out of the technology available. But not every child has access to a computer or wi-fi — something schools and the Government are keenly aware of. Schools can support their disadvantaged pupils through the Government’s £400m scheme to provide access to technology.
Around half of Emma Marshall’s pupils are classed as disadvantaged. The head of Havelock Academy secondary school in Grimsby carried out an audit to assess what tech each student had, and provided a device to those in need. Teachers then produced “how-to” guides to help pupils use their tech, and made sure a clickthrough to their remote-learning website was clearly available on the school home page for ease. “We’ve also provided paper packs of work for those who would really struggling accessing everything online,” says Emma. Now children have livestreamed lessons to complement their set work. “Other times, we’ve got our ‘cheer-up’ videos that the
staff filmed to say, ‘We’re still here, we’re still missing you, we want you to see our faces and our smiles because we are here for you’.”
Increasingly parents are recognising the huge efforts schools have made to teach their children remotely.
Debbie Rose’s daughter Rebecca, age 14, attends Yavneh College.
Debbie says: “I feel incredibly grateful to the school and the teachers for their continued support, lessons and time taken each day to offer some normality for the kids at such a difficult time for all.”