Headlines By James Saunders 8th January 2021
Welcome Back I realise that every time I have written to you recently the Government has made an announcement or u-turn the very next day, often voiding what I have said. So for now at least, all I can say with absolute certainty is that we don’t know how this will go, so here’s the position for now. We are staying alive to the facts and changing climate and, as difficult as it is, things will more than likely need to change further over the coming weeks - thank you for your patience and adaptability. If you have been confused by too much communication, or disappointed with the decisions we have had to take so far, I apologise. As always with schools, or any organisation, sometimes we won’t always get it right from the start. In a rapidly evolving landscape our aim has always been to strike a balance that serves both staff, learners and our community. Whilst we have taken the time to think things through before communicating with you, the urgency with which we have had to make decisions could mean that we will have to go back and change some decisions or issue further guidance. I hope that this is not the case but we need to remain agile and be prepared to adapt Remote Learning I would like to kick things off by talking about remote learning. There is a lot of momentum around this at the moment. I think you will agree that it is hard to do remote learning and given the choice we would all opt for in-class every time. It is certainly clear that there is a much greater national expectation of us this time round and we have already stepped up our expectation of what we require from our learners. It feels like a sequel more of the same but with a storyline that has moved on a bit. The very best sequels don’t simply repeat the story from the first one; they pay homage to what went before and acknowledge what was learnt along with introducing some new challenges. The Terminator is a good example of this.
If we take the main protagonist, Sarah Connor, she is very much the rabbit in headlights in the first movie - it is all done to her. That is a bit like us in the summer term. We got swept along with the narrative with no real understanding of the landscape or what we were dealing with - it was brand new. As we enter lockdown 2, the sequel, we find ourselves able to adopt a more informed, resilient and stronger stance, much like Sarah Connor in Terminator 2. The narrative can’t simply be a repeat of what went before because we have been through it already - we have learnt what has worked well and have grown through the experience. And the audience expects more. In the case of Terminator 2, protagonists don’t come more up for a battle than Sarah Connor; there is nothing she cannot face head on - even judgement day. We face our own new challenge - stepping up our online learning provision to include a more personal connection, either through live lessons or prerecorded. I personally prefer pre-recorded however that is a personal choice. What is clear is that there is no evidence that one method is better than the other. There are many arguments in the public domain presenting live teaching as the panacea. I would argue that it is too early to tell. Here is an interesting article from Mark Enser should you wish to look into the debate further: https://www.tes.com/news/ coronavirus-schools-online-learning-are-live-lessonsreally-better-recorded-ones The model we will be using will be fluid and suit the individual teacher and the topic being studied. Our aim is for learners to actually learn something not for it to appear that they have learnt something. This is the message I have also shared with staff. I received much feedback after the first lockdown and we have fed this into our provision this time round. One of the things that you wanted was to be able to maintain the structure of the school day and for there to be more connections between teachers and learners. We will be sharing with families and learners our guide and expectations around remote learning. What we have asked for is a high standards model and have made a few requests to help maintain the routine of a day at school. For example, we intend to be live at the start of every lesson to welcome learners, we will take a