Schools have adopted a range of approaches to remote education in light of the number of pupils they have on-site. We have pulled together some examples of how schools and trusts around the country are combining a strong focus on remote education while also accommodating a significant number of critical worker children and vulnerable children on site.
The Steel City Schools Partnership, Sheffield
CEO: Nicola Shipman
The Steel City Schools Partnership in Sheffield – a trust of six primary schools – is using a variety of delivery approaches, for example:
- Having a teacher and member of support staff in school teaching the class in person, whilst the lesson is also streamed live to the rest of the class at home – so the teacher is able to teach all children in the class.
- Having a teacher and member of support staff teach a lesson in the school, and another suitably qualified member of staff deliver the same lesson – adapted – to pupils remotely.
- Where a school can’t offer a ‘live’ experience, teachers have been prepping resources in advance such as interactive lesson flipcharts which can be used at home. Sometimes this includes a recording of the teacher taking pupils through the resources.
- In two-form entry primaries, giving one teacher the responsibility for face-to-face teaching for the year group and the other teacher the online (if numbers allow).
The numbers of critical worker children and vulnerable children on site has varied across the term, with up to 34% overall attendance in some schools.
Beacon Rise Primary School, South Gloucestershire
Headteacher: Christopher Thomas
Beacon Rise Primary School, an LA maintained school in South Gloucestershire, has adopted a range of approaches:
- Surveying parents about their critical worker status and following up with phone calls to check whether parents definitely needed places, as well as with requests for identification in a few cases.
- Using Google Classroom to provide pre-recorded lessons – with Maths, English and foundation subjects every day (with pupil engagement and work tracked) as well as assemblies, daily story time and time for social interaction. Parents have appreciated the lessons being recorded to allow them to support their child to catch up later on work if necessary.
- Allowing higher level teaching assistants to oversee the delivery of the pre-recorded lessons to some groups of pupils in school, freeing up teacher time to prepare the resources and lessons.
- Providing focused CPD on the key skills that staff will need, including effective weekly follow up calls to parents and managing IT.
The numbers of critical worker children and vulnerable children on site has varied across the term, with up to 37% overall attendance.
RAF Benson Community Primary, Oxfordshire
Headteacher: Steph Fawdry
RAF Benson Community Primary School, an LA maintained school in Oxfordshire, 97% of whose pupils are from service families, is using a mix of approaches:
- Recording lessons that are taught to critical worker children and vulnerable children in school and then instantly uploading these to Google Classroom. This reduces duplication for teachers and is also welcomed by parents who can watch the video with their child at a time that suits them and works around other children in the family.
- Securing greater engagement of pupils by, for example: teachers checking in with parents on progress and providing support; a weekly achievement ‘Ass-zoom-bly’ to celebrate success; and breakout rooms to see each other and work in small groups with the teacher.
- All staff working from school to support the sometimes significant number of children in school, while maintaining the system of controls necessary to prevent transmission of the virus.
- Working closely with RAF Benson to ensure that, wherever possible, service personnel have laptops and are able to work from home and therefore do not need critical worker children places in all cases.
- A majority of staff using the Lateral Flow Device (LFD) tests each week, which has minimised any impact of asymptomatic cases.
The numbers of critical worker children and vulnerable children on site has varied across the term, with up to 40% overall attendance.
Star Academies
CEO: Hamid Patel
Star Academies Trust, a trust of 30 schools across the country, is adopting a mix of approaches:
- Pupils in school access the same remote education as those at home. In cases where there are a significant number of pupils on site, they are taught as a class by their own teacher, with the lesson live-streamed to those at home. At other times, a different teacher will teach the class (either from their home or from school) to give the class teacher time to complete other work.
- Bubbles have been reconfigured this term. This allows for pupils of different age groups to form a bubble within one large classroom where they can access live lessons, with support and supervision, using devices and headsets. These pupils take break and lunch at the same time as others in their bubble. Discontinuing staggered timings enables all lessons to be delivered following a standard timetable and eases the burden on staff. Lessons have also been shortened by a few minutes to enable teachers and pupils, working at home or at school, to take some rest.
- In situations where teachers are struggling to teach live lessons and children are on site in their classroom, collaborative arrangements are considered such as collapsing classes together to allow a single teacher to deliver to more than one class.
- The trust is actively encouraging teachers to use resources from Oak National Academy, the BBC and other services, provided that these complement the school’s schemes of work and are used with proper instruction and guidance to pupils.
- Schools are purposefully using a mix of synchronous and asynchronous learning to maintain good quality interaction and focused independent work. Teachers are explicitly told that there is no requirement for them to deliver constantly during the day and pupils are reminded not to spend extensive time on screen. The importance of independent reading is stressed to all year groups.
- Arrangements for transfer of pupils’ work, books and resources between home and school have been carefully arranged, with assigned days for different groups of parents to drop off and collect any work that is not submitted online and to renew reading books. Quarantine arrangements are in place in an assigned school office.
The numbers of critical worker children and vulnerable children on site has varied across the term, with up to 36% overall attendance in some schools.
The Delta Education Trust, South Coast
CEO: John White
The Delta Education Trust on the South Coast – a trust of 3 special and AP schools (with a further 2 in pre-opening) – is using a variety of delivery approaches, for example:
- Strongly encouraging all children to attend, given the vulnerabilities they have and given that many of the vocational courses children are taking are much easier to deliver face to face.
- Using a wide variety of approaches to remote education in order to meet the very different needs of learners. For example, staff have created work packs which are either sent or emailed home, created preprepared resources, as well as delivered live lessons particularly for those following more academic routes. The trust has thought carefully about which tasks and activities can be done at home remotely and which need to be done in school.
- Adopting a flexible and supportive approach to staffing, including allowing staff who are self-isolating to continue to provide remote education and make welfare calls.
- Enhancing safeguarding arrangements by following up with children who are not attending in school lessons with safeguarding / welfare calls several times a week
The numbers of critical worker children and vulnerable children on site has varied across the term, with up to 71% in some schools.
Middleham and Spennithorne Church of England Primary Schools, North Yorkshire
Executive Headteacher: Lindsay Evans
Middleham Church of England Primary School and Spennithorne Church of England Primary School and are two small, federated, LA maintained primary schools with 73 pupils on roll in North Yorkshire. They have approached the challenge of managing a large proportion of children on site in a number of ways:
- Collaborating with other small local schools to address the issues which faced them all. For example, staff have found it very helpful to look at how the national curriculum can be delivered within multiple year group settings. This has also focused on getting the balance right between catch up, providing work online and face to face teaching, whilst trying to address staff work-life balance. Teachers have found that using time-limited break out rooms online allow colleagues teaching the same age groups to keep conversations focused and minimise the impact on workload.
- Collaboration with other local schools has also extended to leadership, with a reciprocal agreement for leadership cover should one school be impacted by COVID-19.
- Teachers posting weekly timetables on Google Classroom including live lesson links, work to be completed and at least 3 catch up session per week where pupils can ask about the work and also chat with their friends. Pupils submit their work online, including videos of practical activities, which is marked / responded to. There is also a daily act of collective worship.
The numbers of critical worker children and vulnerable children on site has varied across the term, with up to 45% overall attendance.
The Embark Federation, Derbyshire
CEO: Matthew Crawford
The Embark Federation, a trust of 12 primary schools in Derbyshire, is also using a variety of approaches:
- Teachers are teaching live online lessons in their normal classrooms allowing them to continue to support those in school. The curriculum offer is the same for children at home or in school.
- A balance has been struck between live lessons and using other platforms to secure remote engagement, as well as individual work packs and resources. This has freed up teacher time to support children both in school and at home.
- Teachers are hosting virtual drop-in sessions to deliver quality feedback to pupils, intervention and to check on pupils’ wellbeing. Learning platforms have been used to enable live marking of work and quality feedback to pupils. These platforms will now to be part of teachers’ daily toolkits after lockdown and will allow us to maintain good communication between home and school.
- Confidence has grown rapidly across schools and teachers are finding many different ways to engage their learners remotely.
The numbers of critical worker children and vulnerable children on site has varied across the term, with up to 40% overall attendance in some schools.
Cabot Learning Federation, the South West
CEO: Steve Taylor
The Cabot Learning Federation, a trust of over 20 schools in Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset, has adopted a range of approaches:
- Requesting details of parents’ critical worker status and then contacting as many parents as possible individually to ensure that as many vulnerable children attend as possible and that critical worker parents do definitely need a place on site. This has maintained strong relationships with parents and built confidence in the approach taken by schools.
- Using pre-recorded lessons in some schools, reducing the planning burden on any individual teacher and freeing up staff time to supervise on site provision. Some teachers have said they prefer using pre-recorded lessons as they allow the same resource to be used a range of times with different pupils, free up time to check in with individual students and allow teachers to learn from each other.
- Using larger teaching spaces where needed and available to enable provision for class sizes of up to 30 (max), whilst still enabling an element of social distancing, including marking out spaces, ensuring clear walkways and increasing ventilation.
The numbers of critical worker children and vulnerable children on site has varied across the term, with up to 48% overall attendance in some schools.
Norton Free Church of England Primary School, Sheffield
Headteacher: Hazel Bell
Norton Free Church of England School, an LA maintained school in Sheffield, is a one-form entry primary school but is confident in its approach:
- Each class has one teacher and one teaching assistant. The teacher delivers live lessons directly to those at home as well as to those in class.
- Each lesson consists of about 20-30 minutes of live teaching, depending on the age of the child, followed by independent work, followed by a plenary in which both the teacher and the TA play a role.
- At other times, a different teacher will teach the class to give the class teacher time to do other work.
The numbers of critical worker children and vulnerable children on site has varied across the term, with up to 37% overall attendance.
The Rainbow Education Multi Academy Trust, Liverpool
CEO: Jonathan Nichols
The Rainbow Education Multi Academy Trust, a trust of 6 primary schools in Liverpool, is using a consistent approach across the trust:
- Teachers are working from home both preparing and delivering remote lessons, reviewing children’s work and responding to queries both from home learners and from Learning Support Assistants in school.
- Learning Support Assistants and support staff are in school (on a rota to reduce staff numbers) to supervise the work of children who are on site (prepared for by the teachers) – with approximately 3 LSAs per bubble to ensure that groups remain small.
- Every morning the teacher carries out a live ‘registration’ with all children via zoom, which brings together both children at home and those in school. This also sets up the learning for the day and reviews the learning from the previous day. Teachers are able to monitor closely which children have and have not accessed the learning at each point of the day and to review the work that has been completed.
The numbers of critical worker children and vulnerable children on site has varied across the term, with up to 33% overall attendance in some schools. The trust is continually reviewing its approach and is considering bringing its teachers on to the school site should attendance of critical worker children and vulnerable children at school exceed 50%.
The Greenshaw Learning Trust
CEO: William Smith
The Greenshaw Learning Trust, a trust of 20 schools in the South West and South East, is adopting the following approaches:
- Y11, 12 and 13 are following live lessons in line with the normal in-school timetable. They are also benefitting from ‘Ivy League Lectures’ run by 6th Form and university speakers.
- Y7-10 are receiving asynchronous lessons using the Trust free online curriculum, supported by additional daily tasks linked to the lessons with work submitted through online worksheets or with a photograph taken and uploaded.
- Daily reading on YouTube with the teacher reading a book and pupils following.
- As a result of these things, there are a considerable number of staff freed up to complete welfare and progress checks.
- Some schools have 'drop in' workshops running throughout the day whereby students can access support when they are stuck.
- Daily tutor time and weekly assemblies to continue developing a sense of community. There is also a choir on a Friday afternoon.
The numbers of critical worker children and vulnerable children on site has varied across the term, with up to 40% overall attendance in some schools.
This should be read in combination with the latest guidance on restricting attendance in schools which includes the system of controls schools must follow for children on site and expectations for remote education.
Support for delivering remote education is available at Our Get Help With Remote Education page on gov.uk, which provides a one-stop-shop for teachers and leaders, signposting the support package available. The Department has also published a ‘review your remote education provision’ tool, to support school leaders. Separately, there is free support available at our Get Help With Technology page, for schools to develop a digital platform.