For the past three months, probably the majority of children have been effectively doing homework, having been required to stay at home during the lockdown. There have been exceptions, for key worker and different groups of vulnerable children.

Homework, at the best of times, is a strange beast in the education system, in that it is mandated, but can result in very mixed outcomes. Activities that are set by the school are required to be accommodated during the child’s time at home.

For some, this might mean a clash between homework and chosen interests. For others the challenge of the work or possibly the challenge of working in the home, competition for space and available technology might impact. Certainly, the recent few months have highlighted the significant difference between the haves and the have-nots. Many schools have possibly discovered aspects of their children’s home lives of which they were previously unaware. It has meant, for many, that schools have had to duplicate on-line work with paper-based alternatives.

Has anyone ever really trained children into homework or home learning? Clear tasks and expectations might be set, but what about “how to”? And if a child was to say that they couldn’t, for some reason, what’s the response?

It may be the case that previous assumptions have been very much challenged. Do all children have the time, space and resources to be able to concentrate on a series of challenging tasks that replicate a school day? This also questions the independent learning level of each child; some will be more capable than others of working on their own, especially if they have been dependent on a level of additional adult help in classroom learning.

Home adult engagement levels may vary, too, from the completely focused and hands-on to those possibly unable to offer help within the learning challenge, and potentially the disengaged.

In many ways, the adult engagement has been the potential casualty of pandemic education, the equivalent of the class teacher scanning the class to see those who are in need of extra support, teacher standards 6&5, or Dylan Wiliam’s reflective, reactive teaching.

While the past twelve weeks may have been a kind of holding operation, the outcomes will be very mixed, because it's been a novel situation in everyone's lives, perhaps because everyone has been trying the find the right balance, but also seeking appropriate forms of communication that help children and their parents to accommodate set challenges.

I wonder how the lockdown experience has altered school views on setting homework, which will become a significant factor in any form of recovery dynamic when schools return? Equally, if the pandemic continues and home-learning has to continue into the autumn, how schools will alter any remote approach?

One thing is certain, it can’t be assumed to be “business as usual”, “back to normal”.

​Planning for learning will need to be significantly underpinned by clarity in assessment. It will need to be longer term, with clear purpose and goals and make better use of class time. Setting home activity might need to incorporate that time for children to have a topic to talk about at home, to write draft notes or first draft writing that can be used as the basis for editing and improvement under teacher guidance in class time. Tasks need to be something that the child can do independently.
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Using time differently will affect the overall dynamics of learning, with home adding greater value to class activities. It’s in teacher planning that this dynamic will start.    

​This phrase will dominate the educational discourse for the foreseeable future. It’s in danger of becoming a new political mantra, with any fallout, or negative consequences inevitably then falling onto schools. I’m sorry, that’s cynical, but it’s hard not to be at the moment.

We are in “unprecedented” times, another political catch phrase, coupled with “gaps in education”.

The unprecedented element is that schools are now hybrid versions of previous organisations, some in face to face, for varied amounts of time, some totally remote learning and some a hybrid of the two. This may well continue into the 20-21 academic year. The remote element has highlighted disparities in access to technology, hardware and data, or family challenges in having multiple need of available resources; parents working from home at the same time as children trying to do schoolwork. Now that this is known, schools might be in a better position to address individual needs should the situation arise.

There is obvious concern for “vulnerable learners”, children who are identified daily in a lesson with needs addressed during the lesson. In a remote situation, this lack of access is likely to be a significant missing element. It might have been addressed by identification and a request to come to school to receive misconception coaching and guidance, coupled with expectations of how to use personal time when working remotely, if this continues, or simply absorption into a learning “bubble”. Whatever happens, these children will be in classrooms in the future.

How much “teacher time” and I mean time with a teacher, do vulnerable learners get in a lesson anyway? I’ll just park that question for now, but it may become an issue in the future. Catch up will require, for some, very highly focused teaching, not just time with another adult.
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We’re now four months into an alternative reality, of which nearly a month would have been school holidays, so three months of lessons have been accessed through remote means, online or on paper. Some children will have gaps. Some through not working, some having accessed the work, but may not comprehend, some will have made progress, perhaps in different ways. Each will be “where they are”, so there will be a need for personalised assessment, within restructured planning.

Which bits of teaching are missing?

In an earlier blog, I looked at different “teacher” models, the presenter, the structuralist (becoming organised) and the holistic, each one a stage in personal development. In many ways, the current remote situation puts most teachers into the structuralist mode, simply because the opportunity to reflect and react in lessons is not possible. So learning is ordered and organised and presented appropriately to children but may not be subject to intervention that would include personal guidance and coaching.

By September, there is every possibility that some children will have been out of school for six months. It will be near impossible to try to “fill the gap”, perhaps the best that can be attempted is to “bridge the gap”.
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• Identify those elements of planned learning that are less secure, but are essential, and must be covered to enable future use of this learning.
• Put plans together for the whole of the next academic year, to give an overview of coverage and to be able to assess any continuous gaps. If possible, start to look at the subsequent year of learning, too, in outline.
• Assess time need for topics. Avoid the natural wish to fill the half term with one topic.
• Consider the use of lesson time and the potential for home tasking to include writing up of notes, or first draft writing, enabling lesson time to be more interactive and focused on learning dialogue.
• Primary schools; consider the amount of extended writing across different subject areas and synthesise the foundation with the core, to create quality, rather than quantity of writing. Maybe even all such writing in one exercise book; see link blog.

​Talk learning; let’s consider the power of dialogue to work through this situation. Everyone talking together to make the best possible framework that can hold everything together for the next few years, not just knee-jerk reactive plans that run out of steam in a few months. Let’s include parents in that dialogue, to help them to help their children, both with the necessary learning, but also the social and emotional upheaval that many will have faced and continue to face.
 
It may well take the whole of the 20-21 academic year to really make sense of where we are in education, especially as the coronavirus pandemic is not yet ended. It can’t just be “business as usual”.

The whole system needs to come together, not beaver away in personal spaces, sharing ideas, resources, and support for each other.

​It’s time for inclusive approaches, not isolationism. The latter way will be devastating for what is, at heart, a collegiate profession. 

Pandemic pensees

​Time is tight

Some readers of a certain age will remember Booker T and the MGs and their music. Time is tight (1969) was regularly played in the discos when I was a teenager, old enough to go out.

Time is tight is a useful mantra, though, in education, because everything is time limited, lessons, days, weeks, terms and now, after children have missed several weeks of personal contact with teachers, but having worked remotely for that time, with mixed outcomes, some commentators are looking at the situation and making statements about lost education. We don’t know how long this current situation will last.

Whatever we might wish, children will eventually arrive back in school “where they are”. Some will have kept up. Some will potentially be ahead of where teachers were expecting them to be and some will have less secure progress, with a few significantly concerning. There will be a need to establish where each child is and to determine the best way forward.

It will need an integrated approach and a reflection on learning dynamics, the link between school and home, of catch-up is to have any effect.

In Primary, this is likely to focus on maths and English. It might be possible now, having used remote learning for several weeks, to look at the dynamics of learning, to have a clearer focus on independent home tasking, maybe using home for practice tasks, with classroom looking at the teaching and addressing of evident misconceptions, with specific guidance for individuals.

It might be feasible for reading aloud, as a form of self-check, to be submitted through IT, using a phone, tablet or laptop as the receiver, to be forwarded to the school.

Extended writing could be done at home, following in-lesson stimulus and planning, with drafts coming back for reflective discussion.

In this way, I could see less argument for holiday schooling, as being proposed by some commentators. At this point in the pandemic, we cannot be secure in making any plans for a return to “normal school”.

Time with a known teacher is far more productive than time with a stranger, and I use the word stranger advisedly. Essential DBS checks on any army of volunteers, even retired teachers, could stretch some of the current systems.

Children will have missed a few topics. Deciding whether these are “essential”, given forthcoming plans might determine a few tweaks. If an essential topic is to replace another, by definition less essential topic, a further consideration might be to look at the allocation of time to the topic. Does the essential topic need to take, say, seven weeks of a half term, or could it be covered in five, leaving two weeks to offer a taster of the less essential topic? Moving away from the half term topic would free time.

All topics lend themselves to supporting the English and often maths curriculum, especially talking, reading and different writing forms, counting, leading to data and measures.

Integrating the different elements can help to free some time. How about sending home a piece of text to read, or an image to consider before a subsequent discussion lesson? Why spend fifteen minutes of a lesson giving time for consideration? Use the time to collate and share responses.

Space, time and resources are in teacher control. How they are used to support learning are under teacher direction. Time management will become more pressing as time passes.

Time is tight; to be used with care.