The Spring and Summer saw schools moved online. This worked moderately well for some, and very badly for others. Unpublished analysis of Renaissance Learning cross-school testing is reported to show that primary pupils typically made about half the average progress in English, and no progress in Maths. Poorer children were most likely to do badly: many went backwards in Maths.
Expecting every one of 440,000 teachers in England alone to devise and deliver 5 hours of online classes a day is self-evidently absurd. This is not their expertise. (I speak as someone who had to record my university lectures. It is not easy). Many resorted to just sending home worksheets: an ineffective way for pupils to learn.
Until we have delivered a vaccine, academic year 2020-21 was always at risk. We needed a plan. Here is one.
1) Make the National Curriculum mandatory (academies are currently exempt).
2) Not just the overall content, but the daily timetable, and what is covered in each lesson. Every school would then have the same timetable. This is what they do in France.
3) Expand the fantastic Oak Academy to cover all subjects. We would then have top class teachers teaching online.
4) Supply the OA work plans to schools, so they can use them in school if they wish.
5) Any individual child required to self-isolate can then follow the Oak Academy material. Hybrid lessons, whereby a child at home tries to follow a live lesson in class, work particularly badly, and would be abolished.
6) If the whole school is out, the pupils would follow the Oak lessons online. The teacher’s role would then be to mark assignments, and to ring children and explain things they have got wrong in the assignments. And to chivvy those who are not working.
7) A teacher might spend an hour a day looking over an Oak supplied summary of the material to be covered that day, 2 hours marking, and 4 hours a day on 30 calls averaging 8 minutes a piece. Every child would be rung every day, helping to concentrate minds. A 7 hour day is a reasonable expectation for any teacher.
8) This is known in the trade as “flipped learning” – the whole class material is delivered online, and individual support is given one on one. This is how Coursera and other MOOCs work. There is no reason it would not work here.
9) As well as delivering more effective teaching, this would reduce the burdens on teachers, while ensuring that they are all asked to do the job they love – explaining things to pupils.
Since the online and in person lessons would be aligned, pupils would be able to re-integrate themselves back into school more easily. Of course, it would not solve every problem. Some pupils hate schoolwork, or have no place to work at home, or no broadband. But it would have solved a lot of them.
We would also make these lessons available, for free, to any UK adult who wants to study for a GCSE or A level in their spare time. Lessons may be useful to recent immigrants who want to learn or improve their English.
We could also make these lessons available internationally, to anyone who wants to learn. This would increase Britain’s reputation, and soft power. Insofar as more people then took GCSEs and A levels, it would also increase UK exports.
265-11