Keeping it 'Real'

As I write this, we are in the midst of making history changing decisions regarding the education of our children. The prime minister announced last Sunday that lockdown restrictions, placed on the UK in the wake of the pandemic, are to be relaxed and schools may be re-opening to children as early as June 1st.

Naturally this caused a lot of panic among parents, who are very worried about the safety of their children. At the time of the announcement deaths were still at over six hundred a day, and although reports suggest it is continuing to fall, the fear of a 'second wave' is not unfounded based on what has happened in other countries. It's the middle of May and June does seem too soon. The National Education Union have recommended a '5 Step Test' approach which has been backed by the
British Medical Association.

The wider consequences are not something we can ignore of course. Thousands of children are missing out on their education, parents are trying to provide this and work from home and a number  of these are not going to be equipped to do so, and of course if you are unable to work from home and you haven't been furloughed you probably have some financial issues by now, just to add to the stress. As an aside, I don't believe we should be calling it 'homeschooling' as this implies that it is an easy option to take 'school' into a home, and it is not. A school is a centre where learning takes place. 'Home-educating' sounds a much better description of what is actually taking place, it also should give a license to parents to educate their children in a way they see fit and can manage.

Learning from home has not been an easy transition. Despite the fact that schools have been investing in technology to support their teaching methods in school over the past twenty years, many of these packages are only completely accessible with teacher input. Work online can be readily acquired by anyone with access to a PC, laptop or tablet but without teacher instruction they might not be able to complete the work independently. Not only this, it's a very two-dimensional way for learning to presented and children begin to suffer from screen fatigue.

Children going back to school this week in Brisbane, Australia.

When I used to work in a secondary school I was sometimes 'playfully' ridiculed for my lack of willingness to incorporate technology into my maths coaching sessions. Having relearned maths myself as an adult, I had realised the importance of manipulating numbers on a sheet of paper or whiteboard to enable myself to understand a process. It also struck me that if the students were going to be sitting a pen and paper exam at the end, they should be equipped with all of the skills to be successful at this. It's true that programs have become more interactive as technology has advanced, however learning to use a protractor to measure an angle produces better results when using your actual hands and an actual protractor.

If like me you have been 'Zooming' left right and centre, you will probably be both marvelling at it's ability to connect you with people all over the world, but also at how many times it fails or you lose your connection - usually right at the point where you are just about to deliver the most pivotal words of the lesson. There have been some giggles this week, at the frozen faces, bad lip synching and those moments where you just can't quite get your point across through the screen, but we have adapted for the sake of the students - and glitchy input is better than none at all.

A Classroom in Athens, Greece

With very little notice, it was announced that schools would be 'closing' but teachers were expected to stay in school for the children of keyworkers. At a time when the whole of the UK was told to stay at home for their own safety,  I can only imagine what an incredibly stressful time this was for them. Having spoken to many parents on the subject of the consequences of cancelled GCSE and A-level exams, coming to terms with impact of this on their children's futures was something that had to be carefully navigated. The best advice I could give was to wait and see...

I am sure that the final decisions made around how to grade students was a tough one to make and there was no easy answer, nevertheless it will have left a whole swathe of students feeling cheated as they are ranked in order of how likely they would be to achieve their predicted grades. Although I suspect there were an equal amount who were delighted at the thought of no exams this summer and an extended summer holiday!

Secondary children should be in school, it's where they will get their best learning experiences with people who are trained to prepare them for the exams that come at the end of their school career and it's where their friends are, however I am not sure it is the best place for them right now. Although two months might seem like a long time, it has most likely been the most traumatic two months of their lives so being at home, with their families, where they feel safe is probably the best option right now. This isn't to ignore the children for whom home is not a safe place, but that is a separate issue for another blog.

Early Years Children Returning to School in France

As for primary children, I am not convinced that sending Reception and Year 1 children back to school before September will have any benefit to the children, apart from instilling routine and them being able to see their teacher and their friends again. As the primary education system becomes more target driven, this could be a great opportunity for younger children to take a break from that and re-discover learning through play and creativity. I feel it is unreasonable to expect children of this age to observe 'social distancing' and indeed this might be more detrimental to them emotionally. You can see your friend from a two metre distance, but you can't hold their hand or hug them. 

Of course we won't know the real impact of all of this on our children's mental health or their academic achievements for a while yet, but common sense tells me that our children are probably not in the best mental place to learn at this time. With too many unknowns to think about, the whole future of our society is uncertain and this is something we are waking up to every day. Apart from the fact that we don't really know how 'safe' it is for our children to return to school, we also don't know that they will actually be in a position to learn - so is it worth the risk?

The Playground at a School in France

And what about our school staff? They are real people with families of their own. On Monday a special school in Bristol was closed as it was reported that two of the teachers were diagnosed with Covid-19. There were 18 children at the school, so that's 18 families that have been affected and if any of the children are those of keyworkers then they will now be unable to carry out essential work. Add to this the 30 colleagues and their immediate families who will also need to go into quarantine - based on there being an average of three people in each family that's almost 150 people that have been impacted on, and possibly more.

And that is just 1 school...