I believe as a teacher to ensure that children do not fall behind due to this pandemic we take advantage of the school holidays and the new found online teaching skills teachers have acquired.
I think that if schools were empowered to highlight the children they feel are most at risk of falling behind in each year group, small online Skype lessons could be held daily during the school holidays. Even if this was just 45 minutes to an hour lessons focussing mainly on maths and english.
Given the cost of this pandemic I think this could be run on a volunteer basis if there was maybe some kind of certification of acknowledgement or similar to the NHS a commerative badge that could highlight the staffs commitment to the cause of rebuilding after the pandemic. Of course you will get some who say it is trying to be done on the cheap, but I believe advertised correctly enough would sign up to support it as a duty and sacrifice for their country, I know I would.
It would also make use of all the laptops that have already been ordered and paid for, whilst helping those children to improve their ICT skills which will be severely lacking.
If there was concern about asking people to volunteer for free then possibly a small financial insentive could be offered from funding already set aside for catch up. I feel the summer holiday coming up offers a huge opportunity to maximise that 6 weeks for when children return, as from experience children do tend to drop off over the summer holidays.
I really do believe that a campaign fronted by teachers who themselves are prepared to volunteer could really generate the amount of staff needed to pull this off at very minimal cost. If there were concerns about unions approack to it union members like myself could speak to them and encourage it.
I really do believe even 2 hours a day during the summer holidays would enable those children most at risk of falling behind to keep up, teachers would still be getting the vast majority of their break, and parents who have worked incredibly hard during this time would get a bit of a break and peace of mind that there children were being supported.
The great catch up.
A once in a generation opportunity for those teachers that volunteer to be able to tell their children and grandchildren what a difference they made in helping to rebuild the lost educational time of a generation.
We owe it to our young people.
Thank you for taking your time to read this.
Mr Barker
Reception teacher.
1302-11