The School Today
Coronavirus – The School Moves Teaching and Learning Online
At the High School of Dundee, we worked incredibly hard to ensure our pupils had the best school experience throughout lockdown. Just as if the pupils were in the School themselves, a timetable of lessons was in place with most of them delivered live using Microsoft Teams. During the first week of lockdown more than 600 live lessons took place in the Senior Years and around 150 in Junior Years. Our teachers also created pre-recorded lessons and continuously uploaded resources to our Virtual Learning Environment. Our Learning Skills Team continued to provide timetabled support whilst our Junior Years teachers devised activities which ensured pupils stayed engaged with one another and had the chance to work and play alongside their friends virtually. Our Senior Years Guidance Teachers met their groups online every week, continuing to provide one to one pastoral support. We also ran a Care Hub at Mayfield to allow the children of key workers to be looked after. Throughout lockdown, we wanted to be sure that we were also building skills in creativity, resilience and confidence so that our pupils were able to adapt to our ever-changing world and take responsibility for their own learning in the widest sense. We
provided as many co-curricular activities as we could. As well as taking part in Sport and Cookery weekly challenges, our pupils have created wellbeing podcasts, produced their own lockdown newsletter and much much more. PE lessons and music tuition also took place online. Rector Lise Hudson said at the time, “The wellbeing of our pupils is always our number one priority, and is something we have worked hard to protect and safeguard during lockdown; listening to our pupils’ concerns and feedback and responding to their needs. “We are a community that works to support each other, and kindness is at the heart of all that we do. As we move towards a reopening, we have learnt how precious our shared humanity is and the power that we have to change the world for the better through our individual and collective actions.” Around 20% of families receive bursary support. Many of our families have been affected financially by the Covid-19 crisis, but our mission is to ensure that no child leaves the School due to financial reasons. We are working hard to support all our families; we’ve put in place variations to help those who need it and our fees are frozen for the forthcoming year.
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