By Nigel Roberts, Headteacher, All Saints Primary School, Bishops Caundle

As in many professions, the past 10 months or so have delivered a number of challenges for primary school staff.

Primary schools have had to make many changes to their ways of delivering the curriculum and, more importantly, supporting the mental health of their pupils. In the current lockdown, the Department for Education (DfE) expects that when schools are working remotely they should ‘set meaningful and ambitious work each day in an appropriate range of subjects’.

For KS1 children (5-7 years old) this work should be three hours a day on average and four hours a day for KS2 pupils (7-11 years old). Schools have used recorded lessons (either by their own staff or more generic lessons available from a number of providers), worksheets, assignments and some live lessons to provide the required quantity of work.
At All Saints, we have been lucky. The governors have invested heavily in Chromebooks for all KS2 pupils over the past few years, which has meant that parents were able to collect these for their children to use.

This, coupled by generous donations by some of our local community along with the government scheme of providing laptops for vulnerable pupils, have meant that all our pupils have the capability of accessing lessons.

This lockdown has seen many more critical workers’ children coming into school. With the vulnerable pupils added to these, primary schools are averaging about 30% of their pupils still attending. This has meant that teaching staff have to cater equally for those in and out of school.

There are positives for all the methods that schools have used for remote work. At All Saints, we are proud at how we have risen to the challenges of remote learning by offering live lessons, all morning every morning (for all KS1 and KS2 pupils). We then set additional unsupported work in the afternoons. We have found that live lessons have provided pupils with immediate support when they are struggling, which means that parents are now having to offer much less – if any – support for their children.

Live lessons also give children some social contact with their peers in a safe and supervised environment. Any new means of practice brings with it additional workload. Whatever the means of delivery of remote learning, teaching staff have been faced with increased pressures, having to learn new skills and overcome technical restrictions and difficulties.

Whilst teaching is my second career and I do not subscribe to the ‘teachers have it hard’ camp, I really do take my hat off to the adaptability, resourcefulness and professionalism of our teachers in these testing times.
When all pupils eventually return (and trust me, we can’t wait), the focus will then no longer be on the delivery of lessons but more so on covering the gaps left by live learning and, above all else, ensuring the emotional needs of our children – caused by long periods of isolation – are being met.

HOME AND AWAY: Children at All Saints participate in lessons online and in the classroom

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