Special Education During Lockdown: Returning To Schools and Colleges in September

This study by the Nuffield Foundation explored how education provision over this time has changed for children and young people with SEND who attend special schools.

Families whose children have special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) have faced unique challenges during the coronavirus pandemic. This study by the Nuffield Foundation explored how education provision over this time has changed for children and young people with SEND who attend special schools.

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      string(3403) "ConnectUs School App for Parents has proved its worth in lockdown at Little Oaks Nursery in Spalding Like somany nurseries and schools, Little Oaks Nursery in Spalding was looking for aneasy way to communicate quickly and effectively with families. They were alltoo familiar with an endless ream of letters being sent home and emails toparents that went unopened!Jen Holmes, manager at Little Oaks, was looking for a simple solution to improve communications with parents, save on staff admin time and cut down on printing costs. ConnectUs’ School App for Parents looked as if it could be the answer but, for self-confessed technophobe Jen, using an app seemed a bit daunting at first. After a short walkthrough with ConnectUs trainer, Robin, Jen saw how easy it would be to use and took out a subscription. Vital information, sent in an instant Sincelaunching the app at their nursery, Little Oak has used it to send importantinformation out to all parents, quickly and easily.‘Theapp was essential a few years ago when we had heavy snow and needed to closethe building unexpectedly. We had to get all the little ones sent home safelybefore they got snowed in! It’s also been excellent for sending out remindersfor things such as 30-hour code validations and returning funding declarations.’Staff can also post key dates such as charity events, fundraisers, trips out and the all-important term dates which has saved them from being bombarded with calls asking, ‘When’s the last day of nursery again?!’ Clear communication during COVID-19 closures SinceMarch, the constant review of COVID-19 guidance has meant that theever-changing arrangements have needed to be disseminated quickly and clearlyto families.Jensays: ‘I really don’t know how we would have been able to do this withoutthe app! We do have a public Facebook page, but sometimes we haven’t wantedthings that weren’t specific to our families, being seen by everybody.‘Little OakNursery has not only used the app to communicate key changes but also todeliver content during closures. They published activity plans,pictures and ideas for the different age groups in-line with what would havebeen in their curriculum so that families could still support children withlearning new skills and mastering existing ones. They even shared videos of stafftelling stories and singing songs and rhymes to keep things familiar for thechildren. ‘We’ve received so many lovely emails back from parents,’ said Jen, ‘withphotos or videos from the children. It has been a really amazing way to keep intouch with everyone.’ Highly recommended Jen Holmes says she would recommend the ConnectUs School App for Parents to any educational establishment where high-level parent engagement is necessary. ‘It’s easy to use, the support team are always accessible by phone or live chat, and it has contributed to our professionalism as well as cutting costs on admin and office supplies. The biggest bonus by far has been for parents to receive important information and updates as swiftly as possible and to have them to refer to by having them on their phone. I’m not quite sure how we could’ve got through the last few months without it!’If youwould like to see how the ConnectUs School App for Parents can transform yourparent communications, simply request a free demo here."
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Digital Learning

Connectus - An amazing way to keep in touch with families in lockdown

9 Oct 2020

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      string(5603) "This report by the Chartered College of Teaching investigates teachers’ views on the impact of partial school closures on learning, wellbeing, school reopening plans and potential long-term implications for education. The COVID-19 outbreak has led to an unprecedented level of partial school closures in the UK and the world more widely. Even though some countries are gradually reopening schools to more students, they continue to be closed to at least part of the student population in 116 countries, affecting over 60 per cent of the global student population.In England, a gradual phased return was initiated at the beginning of June, with students in Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 being encouraged to return to schools – but the latest available numbers show that only 26 per cent of children in Year 6, 20 per cent of children in Year 1 and 22 per cent of children in Reception are actually attending school.Initial plans for all primary school students to return to school before the summer holidays have now been abandoned and all students are currently expected to return to schools full-time from September. This means that, taking into account periods when schools would have been closed because of holidays, the majority of students will have missed roughly 14 weeks of face-to-face teaching by the time they return to school in September, making the current partial school closures unprecedented in scale and length.Main Points:The majority of teachers in this sample feel confident with planning and delivering distance learning, but some would welcome additional training. Around half of teachers felt they had maintained good contact with their students but some felt that the crisis had strengthened their relationships with families whilst others had struggled to engage parents. Most teachers think that around half of their students are coping well with distance learning but nearly all are worried about at least some of their students. Strategies such as quality feedback, adaptation and a range of activities were thought to contribute to more effective distance learning.Concerns were raised over children who are unable to access online learning. However, benefits have been reported for other students such as positive responses to learning more autonomously and at their own pace, spending more time with families and having the opportunity to learn new skills, including the use of new technologies.Technology has provided many new ways of working which teachers would like to maintain in the future. These include setting and marking homework online, creating banks of video lessons to use for training, revision, flipped learning and remote teaching and using video conferencing for meetings and CPD. Teachers hope that embracing these methods may enable more flexible working and a better work/life balance for staff in future.Teachers described the extensive work that has gone into supporting families throughout this crisis. Parents turn to teachers for support with a wide range of issues, including financial worries, housing issues, domestic violence and coping with bereavement. In many cases school staff feel ill-equipped to deal with these issues. Teachers ask for funding and support from other services such as charities, social workers and psychologists, to enable them to continue meeting these wider societal needs. Teachers would particularly like training in promoting wellbeing and supporting children who are grieving or traumatised.The negative portrayal of teachers in the media has had a significant impact on teachers’ wellbeing and is considered a potential threat to the ongoing recruitment and retention of teachers. Many teachers have felt unsupported by the government throughout this crisis, finding communication unclear and inconsistent. They would like concise, consistent and timely guidance in future, including a clear plan to follow. Teachers called for more collaboration between policymakers and practitioners, with teachers’ views being valued and trusted and would like to see a better public understanding of what teaching entails, leading to a more supportive and positive image of the profession. The impact on teacher and student wellbeing is varied. Around one-third of teachers think that partial school closures have negatively impacted the wellbeing of most of their students. 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Teachers rated small-group tuition as the favoured method for helping students who have fallen furthest behind academically.Teachers voiced concerns about staff and student safety and the difficulty of social distancing in most school settings, particularly with younger students, which is why they would generally"
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Leadership

Education in Times of Crisis: Teachers’ Views on Distance Learning and School Reopening Plans During COVID-19

12 Aug 2020

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      string(5509) "Leo Academy Trust children showcase their skills at a Google Chromebook Summit Sponsored ArticleG Suite was rolled out in September 2019 and not only has it enhanced collaboration between teachers and classes across the six schools in the borough of Sutton that form LEO Academy Trust but it has proved to be a lifeline during lockdown. Graham MacaulayUsing the platform, pupils in the trust canvideo-call their teachers for remote lessons and have supervised group calls tocatch up and check in with each other socially. ‘It is a great way of keepingin touch with friends and they feel that they still have a place in the schoolcommunity,’ said Graham Macaulay, Director of Technology at LEO Academy Trust.It was not aspur of the moment decision to adopt Google. Senior managers started to look atthe possibilities over two years ago as they were keen to move to the cloud toimprove efficiency and save the trust money. In fact, G Suite is saving thetrust over £48,000 a year. But the main benefit is that they have been able toprovide their 4000 or so pupils with a Chromebook free of charge and, in aworld where politicians are still unable to guarantee access to devices and broadband during lockdown, that puts LEO Academy Trust pupils ahead ofthe game.Seeing how other schools used Google ClassroomMacaulay feels that the implementation has been especially successful because of the time spend in planning. ‘We spent about two years on the strategy,’ he said. ‘We were talking to stakeholders and taking feedback from all sectors of the organisation. So, when we came to implement the strategy, people understood what they were doing and why.’First, they looked at what other schools were doing. The executive team went to Britannia Village Primary School in Newham and worked closely with the school finding out what worked and using them as a sounding board. 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KirriGooch, National Accounts Manager at Google Education, and her team were able todeal with other queries. ‘Going into the cloud is very different,’ said Kirri.‘Schools need to look at infrastructure, think about their Wi-Fi needs. Somehave been wedded to the ideas of servers and traditional technology for manyyears and now they need to look at bandwidth and switches.’ Google has many resources in the TransformationCentre which deal with these issues and the TeacherCentre which provided case studies and answered many of theirquestions.They worked with London Grid for Learning tosort teething problems and benefit from their expertise.  They have a technical consultant, a champion,who can support schools, discuss issues and troubleshoot on G Suite for LGfLschools. Graham noticed that the nature of conversations changed quite quicklyfrom ‘how do I?’ to ‘and so we could ..’ as they began to see widerpossibilities.The academy ran a pilot project across all yearfour classes in the five schools which had very experienced and confidentteachers with the idea of measuring the impact over time. Almost immediatelythey could see the advantages of providing a device for every child fromcentral funding. It is a great advantage to have a commonplatform and using Google Classroom has worked well. ‘The ones we had beforewere entirely successful.  There wereissues,’ said Graham, ‘and if anything is a chore, teachers won’t do it.’Accessibility aids children with SEND Accessibility is in-built in G Suite and Chromebooks. Ajani is partially sighted and uses a standard Chromebook but has a larger external screen. Ruby is deaf and plugs her hearing aids directly into her Chromebook so she gets a better sound quality. 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Applications and Software

Learning Lessons In Lockdown

12 Aug 2020

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      string(5594) "Christmas 2019 at Busythings HQ. Left to right: Teagan, Little Chris, Ian, Sue, Duncan, Sally, Judi, Big Chris, and Me Industry NewsForbillions of people, 2020 has been a completely different year to any other. Almostovernight, the importance of effective digital learning materials becameparamount in the education world. As themanaging director of an educational software company, and as a mother, I havebeen able to experience the resulting issues from both the developer’s and the consumer’spoint of view.Planning to be creative Our small development team has been together for mostof the 20-plus years the company’s been going. January is traditionally our time for planning. This year seemed full ofpossibilities, and although we never quite manage to develop everything in theplan, we thought this coming year would be different! The programmershad had a ‘dry’ 2019, spending a lot of time on behind-the-scenes development –bug fixes, feature updates, management systems etc. I hoped to get creative and make some more of the early years games that we are known for and have some fun! We planned games that would make children laugh. In between client work, Little Chris the programmer has been making a new 3D fishing game that’s different to any game we’ve made before, and we needed to let him finish. We discussed getting an app for families into the App Store to help parents and their children access games more easily. Change of plan in the New YearThese andother things we had planned promised a productive and creative year.Throughout January, we watched the Covid-19 crisis in China unfolding, and it gradually dawned on us that we might need to do things differently. Two weeks before the first lockdown we all took our computers home. I thought we could do a couple of weeks of this; Duncan The Programmer thought it could be 8 weeks.  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Duncan!’ I said.At the start of the second week of working from home, our server ground to a halt: Busy Things usage was way beyond what it was used to, and we had to do an emergency upgrade. Not good for stress levels. Ourmobiles were taking redirected calls and they didn’t stop ringing. We startedscheduling Zoom tutorials three times a day so teachers and parents could speakto us directly and so we could easily demonstrate our games. Teachersand parents had been derailed overnight and suddenly had to find effectiveonline solutions for teaching and learning. We were dealing with more customersthan we could handle, but it was exciting to be talking to our customers, sharingtheir stories and helping them put their plans into practice.Meanwhile, on the home frontAs thingssettled down, I was able to turn my attention to my youngest son. The kitchenbecame our office and classroom. When I dug deeper into the communications he wasgetting from school, I was surprised by the low quality of some of the thingshe was receiving: badly formatted PowerPoint and Word documents that requiredlittle interaction and gave out no feedback. It becameobvious to me how important communication is for any kind of assignment. Theteachers that my son had time for were those quick to respond with clear feedback,putting forward new work regularly with an expectation for the next lesson. Thesubjects where the communication was poor and work submitted was neveracknowledged were soon avoided by us both. I enjoyed seeing what he was doing and waiting for the feedback to arrive. Platforms that hosted quizzes were popular; they didn’t rely so much on teacher communication, but sound, animation and sometimes scoreboards helped with engagement. This is no surprise: whether at school or at home children will soon lose interest in a teacher (and subject) that doesn’t mark their work or engage with them. Good ideas for home learningAs the deadline for returning to the office remained fuzzy, January’s plans were put to one side and we began compiling a wish list of new features. The conversations we were having with Busy Things users, teachers and parents, had got us thinking. We setabout adding multiple features to support teaching effectively online. We beganto think about designing a system for communication that made it easy forteachers to plan activities ahead of time, assign games and activities, viewresults and timelines and send individual feedback attached to specificactivities. We talked about children and teachers being able to make littleavatars of themselves to make communication more fun. Sending stickers withmessages was another must.Onreflection none of these features are particularly ground-breaking, but if theyare designed well, look good and are easy-to-use they can transform the onlinelearning experience. Production began immediately. Wedrip fed the features through and by September we had finished the bulk ofthem.Practical ideas for learning away from the screen. Whilst all the new communication features were being programmed our creative side was directed into regular postings, suggesting practical ways that parents could teach a curriculum objective at home.  Learningfrom home means classroom resources are not to hand – from counting blocks tochemistry labs, so domestic equivalents are needed. We wanted to encourageparents and teachers not to rely too heavily on the screen. We had to think ofwhat was ‘practical’ for parents to do at home.  Ian The Artist and Teagan The Artist began aposter campaign called Busy at Home.  Eachposter presents a collection of curriculum-linked activities that you can do"
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Blended Learning

Being Creative At Work And At Home With The Help Of A Great Team

25 Nov 2020