How do we ensure all students can access education this term?

  • How do we support medically-vulnerable students and teachers?
  • How should learning continue if students (and teachers) are self-isolating?
  • How should we respond if we face a second wave?

There is no perfect answer to these questions. But almost all the answers I’ve seen rely on schools being able to open each day, and students and teachers being able to attend. I’m not always confident this is a safe assumption.

In this post, Janice Allen explains the phased induction her school is pursuing, Over the first two weeks of term, students will be in school three days a week, and learning at home for the other two. We would all like schools to be able to open as they used to. But this approach offers tentative answers to the questions above.

(This post was written before the most recent government announcement about Tiers of response.)

I tend to fly under the radar publicity wise both personally and for our school: we contribute to the work of those partners who we work closely with and trust but we tend not to seek publicity beyond our community. The relevance of this point is that before the summer, we decided we would be having a phased induction of two weeks in September which delivered online learning and in class learning: 3 year groups in a day for the first two weeks. Whilst we were convinced as a community because of our context that this was the right approach I asked my staff to not share what we were doing on social media because I didn’t want any negative publicity – I also didn’t want to put the school at risk from unnecessary DfE, Ofsted or media interference.

After the many changes that have taken place this summer and after reading in The Times this morning that government maybe considering rotas in schools in lockdown areas I have decided to share what we are doing in the hope it might help others to think of alternatives to how we can ensure all our children have a high quality education over the coming months.

Why phased induction?

Context is important: our school is in Rochdale which had high infection rates before the summer, we serve an area of high deprivation, we have a high BAME community of pupils and staff, many of our pupils live in multi-generational households, we have strong relationships with parents and the community, we are a PFI school and over our original published PAN (1350 compared to the school being built for 1200), we have narrow corridors and only one space for lunchtime which has classrooms surrounding it. We also have a very low staff turnover so we don’t have the complexity of inducting a large number of new staff with a phased induction.

What do we mean by phased induction?

The first two days, Thursday 3rd and Friday 4th September, we will use to induct all year groups as we would normally do at the start of term but include specifically how to access the live learning and to practise with their teachers,  alongside providing the emotional support for our community and spending time ensuring pupils understand why we have made changes in school. The next two weeks we will follow the timetable below:

  Y11 Y10 Y9 Y8 Y7
Monday In school In school In school Online Online
Tuesday In school Online In school Online In school
Wednesday Online In school Online In school In school
Thursday Online In school Online In school In school
Friday In school Online In school In school Online

Pupils will be at home for the online learning and teachers in school. Pupils and teachers will follow their timetable so that the live learning is synchronous with the curriculum that is taught in school. We spent ages deciding which days children should be at home which complemented their timetable ensuring subjects received an equitable number of lessons in school and at home.

The live lessons have been developed following lots of discussion with colleagues across the country and I am particularly grateful to Josh Goodrich of Oasis South Bank who helped us to enhance our provision before the summer. The live learning is now in its third iteration since March. The live lessons with the teacher will allow pupils to complete tasks in their exercise books which can be brought back into school and/or complete on Google classroom. We know that our pupils can access Google classroom on their phones but these are not conducive to submitting work so we have had to adapt to suit our context. We’ve handed out pretty much all our stock of Chromebooks before the summer so we have a library system in place for these two weeks for our remaining stock.

Our teachers worked together in July to decide which aspects of the curriculum would be best suited to a mix of online and in class; they planned how the online lessons would build on the in person lessons and complement what they would be doing when back in school; they designed learning that had accountability loops built in so that they could assess learning immediately through hinge questions, multiple choice, retrieval and use of the chat function with their teacher.

Our subject specialists have planned the online lessons using advice and guidance from EEF and the blogs published by Harry Fletcher-Wood whilst making it specific to our school, our curriculum and our schemes of learning. Crucially, for four years we have had timetabled subject planning meetings during the school day which have one purpose: curriculum and teaching, learning and assessment. We have built this over four years so we know that the vehicles for reflection are strong enough in order for us to use this time to be responsive as we go along. We might get some things wrong, but we are taking a calculated risk that this is better for us at this moment in time – and it will help us get better.

What do we need to do to get this right for students?

What is important to us is not water down our objective which is “To create a compelling learning experience”. We have worked hard since the start of 2016 to develop a very strong curriculum, improve teaching and learning and develop high quality assessments. Throughout this, we have been supported by the team at Evidence Based Education and we have trained assessment leads in the majority of subject disciplines. Our children will be moving around to access the curriculum with their subject specialists because we do not want our children to be any more disadvantaged in their learning. For us, it won’t work if there is a non-subject specialist teaching because of the way we have collaboratively designed our curriculum. Furthermore, our population design within classes is specific to our school with a balanced range in each class of prior attainment, ethnicity, gender, SEN and we don’t want to lose that by teaching the groups in form classes. It is contextual to our school, it is not for everyone.

The phased induction will be reviewed in the first week and 17th September and we have hired two marquees to help feed the children at dinner from 14th September because our building does not allow us to do staggered dinners without impacting on learning (that is a significant cost of £20k for 8 weeks – after that I have no idea what we will do). We will have to be responsive to what comes but with a phased induction it helps us to:

  • Deliver our curriculum;
  • Identify any pinch points so we can adapt our one way systems;
  • Ensure all our pupils are engaging in the online learning and in the case of further restrictions meaning we are ready to go this time;
  • Build habits, policy and procedure for online learning at the start of school rather than midway;
  • Ensure we have a bank of material which will help individuals or families who are self-isolating;
  • Support families and children back into school and give us the opportunity to support and re-set any behaviours;
  • Develop our practice online and build a bank of lessons so that we can build a Falinge i-college which can be used for pupils in the future;
  • Encourage the habits of self-regulation and metacognition in learning that we were keen to develop with home-school learning this year.

We believe it will work for us in our context and our school and crucially will enable us to have all children back full time with the confidence of parents and staff, enable us to deliver compelling learning and a full curriculum, help induct the children into routines and support us if further restrictions arise.

Conclusion

When the guidance came out in July, I looked for the semantics and the language – the musts and should nots and focused on the Health and Safety requirements. This is not a rota – this is a full offer, an induction over two weeks which gives us the opportunity to be responsive to any eventuality. I may get in trouble but my purpose in writing this is to put my head above the water which may encourage others to consider how best to meet their pupils’ and communities needs.

The way we work as a school is not on a deficit model, we are constantly seeking new opportunities in every eventuality and we see this phased induction as a springboard to a longer term project which could maybe support those children for whom school does not work.

We know from the work we have done with our families and communities throughout lockdown that they are positive about this approach and we have been in discussion with them every step of the way.

What we are doing is a calculated risk, but it is a risk that we feel is right for us as a school and for our community at this moment in time, and if you don’t take a risk or that leap of faith you will never know what could have been.