As we move into the summer term supporting Sheffield schools and academies in their provision of a home learning offer has become one of the key education priorities for the city.
Schools have successfully made the transition into the new arrangements and provision is in place for those vulnerable pupils who are considered to be safest at school and for those pupils whose parents and carers are key workers and are not able to make alternative arrangements. Schools have also been providing a range of opportunities and resources to support home learning for their wider cohort. This document is intended to support the further development of home learning over the coming weeks and months. Throughout this document, the term ‘home learning’, rather than ‘home schooling’ will be referred to. This is because the term ‘home schooling’ may give the impression of creating a virtual school day.
“Promoting positive mental health and wellbeing for children and their families should be at the heart of our decision making.”
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“We are encouraging schools to continue to prioritise regular contact with children and young people.”
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There is an obvious and important overlap between the guidance in relation to mental health and the guidance relating to home learning. It is not a co-incidence that these topics are being discussed at the same time and we are encouraging schools to continue to prioritise regular contact with children and young people. This regular ‘checking in’ creates the opportunity to both guide pupils to appropriate and realistic home learning opportunities and also monitor and to support the emotional wellbeing of children and young people regardless of their circumstances.
“Using a range of approaches to communicate with pupils can avoid the unintended risk of causing anxiety if particular staff are sometimes unavailable.”
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The need to promote positive mental health and wellbeing for all of our children, young people and their families should be at the heart of our decision making in relation to our home learning offer. The role of ‘keeping in touch’ in achieving this should not be underestimated and this should be the aspect of our provision that we protect most carefully as our organisational resilience is tested in the weeks ahead.
In designing an effective home learning offer and a school’s approach to ‘keeping in touch’, it is important to use a range of approaches. This has organisational benefits as it spreads out the workload across staff teams and supports school resilience but also mitigates the unintended risk of causing anxiety to pupils if particular staff are unavailable at certain times. Mapping of communication also supports liaison with other colleagues in relation to additional or modified communication with our most vulnerable pupils.
Planning the content of home learning involves some difficult decisions for schools. There is a danger that we focus on how we will deliver the learning, and how we will comply with data protection and safeguarding considerations, more than what the learning should contain. Teachers and school leaders may find that they have competing instincts when they think about home learning: to try to deliver a modified version of planned learning, to produce a super-charged version of homework or to design content that best supports families in surviving at home. If the content of home learning is overly academic it may not adequately meet the needs of families at this difficult time.
“There is a significant danger of widening gaps for disadvantaged pupils and other vulnerable children and young people if our home learning offer isn’t sufficiently inclusive.”
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“It is important to clearly define the guiding principles for your home learning offer.”
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An important aspect of home learning is to clearly define the guiding principles for your home learning offer. Hopefully this document should help with this. It may be useful to consider the importance of developing and securing key skills and the value of using this learning time to revisit and consolidate learning. Clearly, schools should not be afraid to plan non-academic activities that will support their families at this difficult time even though this does not naturally align with our instincts as educators. This may include activities that provide entertainment for children that enable adults to work from home.
Schools need to carefully consider how accessible home learning is for pupils in all contexts. The challenge of making an inclusive offer that all pupils can access is considerable. As many professionals are discovering working online requires a combination of sustained internet connectivity, sufficient devices and space for everyone in the household who needs it, and any available additional resources required by the task! There is a significant danger that one of the outcomes of this period is considerably wider gaps for disadvantaged pupils and other vulnerable children and young people if our home learning offer is not sufficiently inclusive.
“We need to see home learning as something that will develop and improve over time – as we would with any new approach we were implementing.”
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COVID-19 is an unprecedented emergency that is impacting greatly on schools. Leaders and staff in schools have responded with extraordinary speed to establish routines and approaches as quickly as possible to support pupils while the majority of staff are well and available for work. In an emergency, there is a tendency, and often a need, to solve problems quickly.
“Seeking feedback from parents, carers and pupils will accelerate our improvement and reinforce our sense of school community.”
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In this context, however, we also need to see home learning as something that will develop dynamically and improve over time as schools share their practice and develop their resources. In this respect, it is no different to any other initiative that a school would implement. We are unlikely to get everything right straight away and we need to give ourselves the time to develop our provision.
Seeking feedback from parents, carers and pupils in developing and adjusting the offer that we make will accelerate these refinements. It will also reinforce the sense of belonging and community that will support everyone in coping with this unprecedented challenge.
Finally, there are perhaps some potential opportunities in this situation that we might seek to maximise when we consider our approach to home learning. This is a unique circumstance where families may sometimes be more receptive to suggestions and support. It may therefore be an opportunity to build relationships with families and young people who are sometimes hard to reach and a chance to promote the value of high quality family time.