When news of a virus outbreak in China first started to trickle through to the UK, who could have predicted the events that followed, as the coronavirus pandemic took its deadly grip on the world. Following the lockdown announcement in the UK, schools were forced to consider a whole new way of delivering learning to their pupils. With limited time to prepare for such a seismic shift, senior leadership teams had to act fast and the ensuing period has been a major exercise in testing the resilience, flexible thinking and creative flair of schools across the country.
Stressed and worried parents, some desperately trying to juggle working remotely with homeschooling their children, find themselves in uncharted waters. With no previous benchmark for evaluating the standard of virtual schooling, it is difficult for them to recognise if their school of choice is providing an acceptable or exceptional service during these challenging times.
One school trailblazing the way in which distance learning is delivered is King Edward’s Witley, a Surrey-based independent co-educational day and boarding school for 11-18-year olds. Mrs Zeba Clarke, Deputy Head Academic at King Edward’s Witley described the School’s initial response when the lockdown was announced, “We quickly realised that we needed to put in place a whole new approach to learning. We took one day to set up the distance learning programme that ran from 23-27 March, the week preceding the start of the Easter holidays (official lockdown was announced in a broadcast to the nation on 23rd March). Colleagues consulted a range of sources, taking much inspiration from the work by international schools in Hong Kong and China, some of whom had shut down as early as December. This helped us adjust our timings and planning. Our staff worked independently during the Easter break to plan and prepare materials for the upcoming term. We had two further days of planning and training at the start of term, largely to familiarise everyone with different aspects of the Zoom technology which we had identified as the best in class to fulfil our teaching needs. We are very blessed with an amazing IT department whose support has been critical to the successful delivery of online learning – they have even created help-sheets and videos to guide us all through the systems and technologies.”
The School was very clear from the outset that pupils should be provided with a broad range of learning opportunities with plenty of scope for more independent, in-depth study across a variety of subjects. Much thought went into creating a home learning experience which as far as possible, emulated the traditional school day, allowing for plenty of interaction and collaboration. Pupils are able to contact their Housemaster/ Housemistress and teachers, via daily rollcalls, individual tutorial sessions, drop-ins and clinics. In their Houses, pupils even have virtual ‘cheese toastie’ nights temporarily replacing the much-loved post-homework snack time at 8.30pm on Wednesdays.
While it remains unclear as to when precisely all pupils can return to the physical classroom, parents must continue to help their children navigate through this entirely new learning environment, which comes will a whole host of physical and emotional challenges.