The mammoth challenges facing teachers

Teach­ers have worked tire­less­ly to edu­cate pupils dur­ing lock­down, both in schools and at a dis­tance. School-lead­ers are now ris­ing to the next chal­lenge: wel­com­ing pupils and stu­dents back to school this month.

The British Edu­ca­tion­al Sup­pli­ers Association’s (BESA) qual­i­ty-assured sup­pli­ers are help­ing schools to pre­pare and adapt their exist­ing class­rooms, tech­nolo­gies and remote-edu­ca­tion plat­forms so stu­dents can access learn­ing in as safe a man­ner as pos­si­ble, whether in school or from home. 

Over recent months, school-lead­ers have high­light­ed key chal­lenges that will become pri­or­i­ty issues for schools when their doors reopen. Head­teach­ers will first and fore­most focus on sup­port­ing the men­tal health and well­be­ing of those chil­dren who have suf­fered trau­ma or bereave­ment dur­ing the lock­down peri­od.

How lost learning impacts earnings

Lead­ers will also look to assess the extent of stu­dents’ lost learn­ing and iden­ti­fy tar­get­ed inter­ven­tions to sup­port catch-up. This will be all the more impor­tant giv­en the Roy­al Society’s DELVE group’s find­ing that England’s stu­dent pop­u­la­tion is now one tenth of a stan­dard devi­a­tion behind where it should be in terms of out­comes. 

If this sounds triv­ial in nature, the con­se­quences it will pro­duce are not. On the eco­nom­ic front, the coronavirus-cohort’s future earn­ings are pro­ject­ed to be per­ma­nent­ly reduced by 2 to 3 per cent a year, at a cost of £3 bil­lion a year to the econ­o­my.

On a soci­etal lev­el, COVID-19 risks dis­ad­van­tag­ing the already dis­ad­van­taged. Those with low­er lev­els of edu­ca­tion­al attain­ment are already five times more like­ly to live in pover­ty than oth­ers. In light of reports that the attain­ment gap has increased by between 36 and 52 per cent over lock­down, COVID-19 risks exact­ing a gen­er­a­tional cost. 

Digitally, schools are way behind

This makes it even more impor­tant that schools are pro­vid­ed with suf­fi­cient resources now. Edtech solu­tions can prove effec­tive in boost­ing attain­ment, using adap­tive-learn­ing tech­nol­o­gy to focus on spe­cif­ic areas where stu­dents need extra help and sup­port, pro­vid­ing bespoke feed­back and insights to class­room teach­ers on progress.

Edu­ca­tors work­ing in schools have adapt­ed to work­ing from home dur­ing lock­down, but unlike busi­ness envi­ron­ments where “con­nec­tiv­i­ty is king”, many schools do not have the dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture built in to enable large-scale use of tech­nol­o­gy. In BESA’s pre-COVID sur­vey, 33 per cent of pri­ma­ry and 11 per cent of sec­ondary schools report­ed that their dig­i­tal con­nec­tiv­i­ty was poor. Schools will need addi­tion­al fund­ing and sup­port to ensure their dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture is future-proof. 

Our teach­ing work­force has made a Her­culean effort to embrace tech­nolo­gies for the ben­e­fit of their learn­ers. We need to ensure our teach­ers are pro­vid­ed with the ongo­ing train­ing and sup­port they need to embed and fur­ther devel­op their dig­i­tal skills using free con­tin­u­ing pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment sup­port from the Depart­ment for Education’s Edtech Demon­stra­tor Pro­gramme, the Char­tered Col­lege of Teach­ing and BESA’s www.LearnED.org.uk con­fer­ences. 

Crafting a curriculum for blended learning

Final­ly, schools are right­ly sourc­ing and devel­op­ing rich cur­ricu­lum plans that are adapt­able to a blend­ed learn­ing envi­ron­ment, ensur­ing lessons and cur­ricu­lum resources are avail­able in for­mats that can be acces­si­ble both in school and remote­ly. Many schools already work with cur­ricu­lum pub­lish­ers to adapt con­tent for their own spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances and UK edu­ca­tion­al pub­lish­ers pro­vid­ed more than £36 mil­lion of free cur­ricu­lum resources to schools dur­ing the first three months of lock­down alone.

   Invest­ment in, and effec­tive use of, edtech is essen­tial to help the UK’s nine mil­lion learn­ers catch up the learn­ing time lost dur­ing COVID-19. Our teach­ing work­force has sup­port­ed our nation’s chil­dren through­out the coro­n­avirus cri­sis and it is now the time to sup­port them. Gov­ern­ment must pro­vide them with the tech­no­log­i­cal infra­struc­ture, tools and train­ing to take their new-found dig­i­tal con­fi­dence to the next lev­el to ensure every child receives access to the edu­ca­tion they deserve, in the class­room and beyond.