Defying distance: Keeping learning standards high

Kathryn Gorman, Head at Abbot’s Hill School, explains how the challenges of the past few months has brought the school community closer together

Schools are reacting in a multitude of ways to the ever-changing demands of the Covid-19 pandemic. At Abbot’s Hill, we reflect on the highly effective way we became a digital school almost overnight and maintained academic and pastoral excellence during lockdown.

At Abbot’s Hill, we thought our great excitement of the year would be our ‘Excellent’ ISI report, which praised our high standards throughout all areas of school life. However, like the rest of the country’s schools, only weeks later, we were forced to navigate complete closure. This required us to create and design a remote learning curriculum and pastoral programme from scratch, train pupils and staff to master online interaction, and utilise Google Meet and Google Classroom to sustain the day-to-day life of our community.

We were fortunate to be able to follow in the footsteps of schools overseas who were at the front line of the response to Covid-19 and we will be forever grateful to colleagues at the Kellett School in Hong Kong and Harrow Prep, Bangkok alongside others in Italy and elsewhere from whom we learnt so much. Nevertheless, nothing quite prepares you when faced with those challenges at such short notice!

Just before closure we were able to hold training sessions for staff to ensure that the Google suite was fully accessible to all Y3–Y11 pupils and the superb SeeSaw APP was understood by our Reception–Y2 pupils and parents. Tapestry continued to work well for Nursery parents and enabled live story time, arts and crafts and other fun activities to be shared with families. Remote learning was going to be tough and we were determined to ensure that all pupils were engaged, motivated and challenged and that staff had the resources to provide stimulating lessons – all of this whilst pupils, parents and staff managed their work from home alongside suddenly becoming teachers and navigating the various other challenges that being in Lockdown brought.

Our plan was to begin every day with live pastoral sessions from tutor groups to assemblies. In Prep, we also had live pastoral sessions at the end of the day: a kind of virtual circle time, if you will. Pupils’ days were therefore framed with human interaction – something that became so essential as the term went on. Staff and pupils missed each other, missed the human contact and the spontaneity of conversation that had been taken for granted. In addition to whole class meetings for registration, tutors and class teachers provided small group support each week to ensure that the pupils had individual and personalised support along the way. In addition, we also provided tailored learning and emotional support for those most affected.

We re-wrote timetables from scratch and gave families something very important – time together that would usually have been spent commuting or dashing to some club or activity. We were determined to find the silver linings in The Great Pause. As the term progressed, we solicited frequent feedback from pupils, staff and parents. With this feedback we were able to adapt our initial plans. Live lessons remained a priority as did the need to provide enriching and challenging extension tasks, clubs and as much ‘normal’ school life as possible. It was important that we regularly reviewed our programme to keep pupils and staff motivated and engaged.

We were able to loan out iPads and Chromebooks so that each pupil was able to have their own device at home. Our amazing IT department worked tirelessly supporting everyone with device issues, technical support and also provided training and guides to ensure that the very best could be delivered to our pupils.

The year has been challenging for all involved on so many different levels: emotionally, financially, personally but we have been proud of the way we have come together. It hasn’t been a smooth ride but we have grown as a community, pulled together and supported each other. The power of positivity and perseverance: that’s how we want to remember Lockdown. There are more challenges and changes to come, for that we are sure but we feel ready to face them head on.

We invite your nursery children and daughters to grow, change and flourish with us.

Abbot’s Hill School was recently awarded ‘Excellent’ ISI ratings across all areas. We invite you to visit our school and see for yourself just how incredible it is. Visit www.abbotshill.herts.sch.uk

This article first appeared in Which School? 2021, which is available now in print and online. You can read the full version here...