EDUCAT ION
for example almost 100% of St Mary’s Junior School parents surveyed during lockdown were very positive about the school’s approach to remote learning. Nationally, though, the picture is a little different, with many parents worried about the long-term impact of being out of school for an extended period, fearing that children could lose out academically. The key is not to panic, says Chris Townsend at Felsted. As long as children are happy in themselves, everything else can be sorted. “Better that children have remained positive and happy during lockdown than that they have covered every piece of content,” he says. Yes, some pupils will need some additional support from teachers, but it’s something that can happen gradually, he stresses. “It really doesn’t matter if this takes weeks or months, not just days, to get the right balance back. Teachers and parents should be encouraging children to focus on the positives at this stage, not the negatives.” Schools also point out that they are used to dealing with pupils who have been raised in different educational systems or haven’t covered the same ground. Helping them to catch up is, ultimately, what they do every day of the school year. At St Faith’s, an increasing number of pupils join from overseas, at different ages and different times of year. “We’ve had to learn over the years how to adapt to that,” says Nigel Helliwell. “A child that might be a few months behind in a subject is really not an issue at all from our point of view.”
Parents talking to prospective
Schools are also gearing up to support pupils over the next academic year if, as predicted, there is a rise in anxiety and mental health issues. This period, after all, has been incredibly hard. Cutting children off from routine, friends and new experiences, coupled with the surrounding uncertainty about when schools would go back to anything resembling ‘normal’, has been less than ideal. Schools are reassuring about the measures they’ve put in place to help. St Faith’s, conscious of the fact that the economic fallout will have impacted on some parents, has put together a thorough induction programme for pupils and sent out a wellbeing questionnaire to ask how they feel about coming back to school.
schools, says Douglas Robb at Gresham’s, should be asking about how they responded to the lockdown. “It’s a sign of how nimble the school is. If they got on with it and prepared something that was decent for the children and got them through this period, that’s a good marker, so the reflective question might be: what did you do and would you have done it differently in trying to provide this online education? I would be wary of any school that says ‘we did it perfectly’.” Their answer will tell you a lot, agrees Matthew O’Reilly. “It will demonstrate the school’s ability to adapt and best respond to any future challenges, ensuring that the pupils’ learning goes uninterrupted whatever the circumstances.” Ultimately, getting children back where they belong – into school – is what this is all about, says Douglas Robb. “That’s what people are clamouring for – getting kids back into a routine, occupied, busy and productive for large parts of the day rather than just marking time.”
“Better that children have remained positive and happy”
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