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This information is intended to provide clarity and transparency to students and parents or carers about what to expect from remote education when we are in a period of local or national restrictions which require entire cohorts (or bubbles) to remain at home.
Becket Keys Church of England School is highly committed to outstanding teaching and learning and will work tirelessly to ensure that all students can continue to make excellent progress when working remotely.
We prioritise student safety and have carefully considered systems in place to ensure that students are safe on-line and teach these skills daily in our lessons.
Remote learning may commence for a variety of reasons and this document intends to explain all of these in some detail: National Lockdown, Local Lockdown, Cohort Lockdown, Partial Lockdown and self-isolation due to infection or contact with an infected person. For details of what to expect where individual students are self-isolating (but the rest of the cohort are in school), please see the final section of this document. The majority of the material here is addressing imposed lockdown of significant numbers of students or indeed the whole school.
We start with some practical tips for parents.
A student’s first day or two of being educated remotely at the beginning of self-isolation or local/national restrictions might look different from our standard approach, while we take all necessary actions to prepare for a longer period of remote teaching.
Note that full details of the school’s curriculum are available on our website for each subject and year group. If the content of the remote curriculum is different this will be made clear by subject teachers.
In the event of a local or national restriction which means school is not operational students will be expected to follow their normal school timetable. Tasks will be set on Show My Homework with links to other software, as appropriate. Some live lessons will be available on Microsoft Teams depending on appropriateness and capacity within the school. This may vary over time; we will generally prioritise those students in exam year groups; Mathematics and English will also be prioritised in all year groups.
If your son/daughter has been sent home to isolate while school is operational, he/she should follow the normal school timetable. Lessons should be accessed via Microsoft Teams. Students will complete the same tasks as other students and will be able to interact with their teacher. If their normal teacher is not available tasks will be set for students to access with instructions for how work should be submitted where applicable.
Our intention is for remote learning to be available from the first day, although it may on occasion take a second day to be fully up and running.
As far as practicable, students will receive the same curriculum as would be the case in school. Tasks in practical subjects such as Art, Design and Technology, Drama, Food, Music, PE and Science will be adapted when necessary for home schooling.
We expect that remote education (including remote teaching and independent work) will take students broadly the following number of hours each day:
Secondary school-aged students not working towards formal qualifications this year |
At least 5 hours per day including homework demands. |
Secondary school-aged students working towards formal qualifications this year |
At least 6 hours per day including homework demands. |
We will use Microsoft Teams for Live Lessons. Every student has been trained in school to log in and we have run trial sessions for all students in all year groups before Christmas. It is possible to get support if you need it from our office: office@becketkeys.org.
We will use Show My Homework for communication regarding lessons. This app (which is familiar to everyone) will be used every day for students to see which lessons they have and to receive feedback. Students can also use it to contact their teachers in addition to the website portal here: www.becketkeys.org/contact.php
We also use You Tube for recorded lessons, the school VLE for saving resources that are used for lessons (www.becketkeys.org/vle.html), various subject specific websites such as MathsWatch and Active Learn. If you have any issues using these tools please contact us: office@becketkeys.org.
Tutor time is taking place every day for every student and this is available on Microsoft Teams. This is an important time for a daily check on learning, provide support for well-being and to offer a time of daily worship and prayer.
Staff are increasingly using Microsoft Teams for more and more creative ways to teach. This can include handing in work and giving feedback. Please speak to your son/daughter about what feedback they are receiving.
Lessons should be accessed using a device suitable for the task. The same applies to completing work. In most cases this will be a laptop or PC, however, other devices are also very suitable. We have sent home guidance about using X-box and PlayStation machines. Many students use phones and iPads very successfully. Students should also be in a location where they are able to concentrate.
We recognise that some students may not have suitable online access at home. We take the following approaches to support those students to access remote education:
You should contact us via office@becketkeys.org for further information. Alternatively, please call us on 01277 286600.
We use a combination of the following approaches to teach students remotely:
The range of approaches we will use to teach students remotely are
Each student will receive a blended approach, the nature of which is likely to vary from day to day. However, Show My Homework will communicate on a daily basis which lessons students have and what they need to do.
Our expectations are that parents ensure:
If you wish to contact the school about a curriculum issue you should contact the class teacher via: www.becketkeys.org/contact.php. Heads of department can also be contacted this way, but the first port of call should be the class teacher.
If you wish to contact the school about a pastoral issue you should contact your son/daughter’s form teacher via: www.becketkeys.org/contact.php. You can also contact the Head of Year via this portal, but the form tutor should be the first port of call.
If you are not sure whom to contact, you can write to office@becketkeys.org and one of our administration team will direct your message to the right person. Please be aware that this could slow down the process as our office team are stretched at the moment.
Periodically, the school will contact you to complete a survey to gain your overall feedback. At any time, you can report your views to OfSTED via the ParentView portal. We are very grateful to all the parents who have taken the time to tell OfSTED how pleased they are with our provision. Thank you! www.parentview.ofsted.gov.uk
We will do this in various ways:
Feedback can take many forms and may not always mean extensive written comments for individual students. For example, quizzes marked automatically via digital platforms are excellent and highly effective. Sometimes feedback will be given to a whole class or to groups within the class as students outcomes may be similar. If you have the Show My Homework app on your phone, you will be notified when your son/daughter receives feedback or makes a comment to a teacher.
Our approach to feeding back on student work is as follows:
We recognise that some students, for example some students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), may not be able to access remote education without support from adults at home. We acknowledge the difficulties this may place on families, and we will work with parents and carers to support those students in the following ways:
Where individual students need to self-isolate, but the majority of their peer group remains in school, how remote education is provided will likely differ from the approach for whole groups. This is due to the challenges of teaching students both at home and in school.
For Years 10, 11, 12 and 13 all lessons will be live on Microsoft Teams. Students will be able to watch and engage in the lesson that is being taught in school.
For students in younger years some lessons will be live on Microsoft Teams and students should check each day to see which ones are available. Where there is not a live lesson, they will be able to access lesson materials via the VLE (www.becketkeys.org/vle.html).
*Thanks to Katharine Birbalsingh for her article which inspired much of this advice. Find the article here: https://www.thearticle.com/online-lessons-for-parents-an-open-letter-from-a-headmistress?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=dlvr.it