Our distance learning journey

David Boggitt, Deputy Head Academic, Cranleigh School, explains the transition from classroom to digital – and how the school’s boarding community adapted to the challenge

Pupils at Cranleigh have enjoyed a full distance learning programme from the moment that the school took the view to close a week before the end of the Spring term. Fortunately, we were preparing for the restrictions well in advance, having been working closely with educators on the ground in China and seeing the pandemic unfolding. Changsha (Hunan Province) opened in Autumn 2020 and we’re opening another in Chengdu (Sichuan Province) in September 2021 and are hugely grateful for the advice and support of our partners, Cogdel.

As a school we also introduced iPads into our teaching and learning three years ago along with Google’s GSuite platform to facilitate collaboration. This involved training all teachers on the devices and tools in the preceding year and therefore gave us an advantage as staff and pupils already understood the place of technology and were used to many of the elements needed for successful distance learning; use of apps, workflows for the submission of work, online assessment methods and new creative possibilities. Pupils were already familiar with email for communication with teachers but we expanded this to include Instant Messaging and video calls to create a more timely and personal experience. The teaching staff also reimagined much of their content for distance learning, making interactive worksheets, video tutorials and online assessments to improve engagement and ensure the curriculum could continue to be delivered.

Having said this, even with this experience and excellent platform to build on, it remained a challenge to get five year groups with well over 300 individual classes up to speed and working successfully in a remote way. We made the decision early on that live teaching would be too intense for our younger pupils so our prep school has two live lessons per day, with the rest being available on our VLE, Firefly. However, we also took the view to conduct all lessons for the senior school (year 9 upwards) as live lessons. We shortened lesson length slightly to reduce screen time and give longer breaks between lessons, alongside adapting our timetable from six days to five to allow for a proper break at the weekend.

As a boarding community, the importance of keeping pupils engaged socially as well as in a co-curricular and cultural programme cannot be underestimated. We held online sport/fitness sessions and challenges, alongside art, music, drama; the co-curricular elements that pupils enjoy and that are so important as part of their day-to-day education. Our pastoral leaders and their tutor teams have been brilliant at keeping pupils engaged with fun and daily challenges, alongside regular 1-to-1 pastoral meetings to support our pupils all the way through this journey.

Naturally, we have had to significantly adapt various approaches to how we approach teaching and assessment, as well as successfully implementing our first virtual parents’ meeting. Teachers have learned a huge amount about what is most effective, so we’re prepared for a time when we may have to implement a distance learning programme in the future.

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