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Category: CREU News

“There is no education like adversity”: learning from the positive experiences of lockdown

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

As Disraeli once wrote “there is no education like adversity”, a maxim that seems just as relevant during the current pandemic crisis as when it was first penned a century and a half ago. In this blog we consider what can be learnt from the positive experiences of home learning for some children and families during lockdown.

Dr Noel Purdy is Director of the Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement at Stranmillis University College, Belfast.

Alistair Hamill is Senior Leader in Lurgan College, responsible for Teaching & Learning, and Learning Lead in Craigavon Area Learning Community.

There is now a wealth of evidence from studies here in Northern Ireland (Walsh et al., 2020, O’Connor et al., 2020) across the rest of the UK (Sutton Trust, 2020; IFS, 2020), in the Republic of Ireland (Mohan et al., 2020) and further afield (Goldstein, 2020), that lockdown has been very challenging for many children and for their parents/carers, often leading to an exacerbation of existing social inequalities (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2020; ONS, 2020) and widely divergent educational experiences.

Among those most likely to be negatively impacted have been those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, those with special educational needs and those in rural areas with poor internet connectivity (Walsh et al., 2020; O’Connor et al., 2020). Most of our attention has now justifiably turned towards planning for what has been referred to as a flexible ‘recovery curriculum’ to prioritise emotional wellbeing needs, to redress the imbalance of educational access and to bridge the learning gap which will inevitably have widened during lockdown.

However, it is important to acknowledge that there have also been some children who have had overwhelmingly positive experiences of learning at home since March, and we argue here that there is also an onus on schools to meet their needs during the Restart and, where possible and appropriate, to seek to learn from and use their positive experiences to promote better learning dispositions among the wider peer group.

Many families have enjoyed home learning

First, and most broadly, the findings of the CREU online parental survey carried out in April/May  highlight that for a sizeable minority of families, the experience of home learning has been enjoyable, offering them an opportunity to spend more time together, enjoying a calmer pace of life, giving parents time to engage confidently and more directly than ever before in their children’s learning, supported by appropriate online resources from the school, while also giving children more time to play, relax and enjoy the outdoors.  Indeed this resonates with a recent UK-wide study where 26% of parents reported that their relationship with their children had improved during lockdown (especially where the youngest child was under 4 years old) and only 4% said the relationship had worsened.  In open-ended comments from the Stranmillis CREU study, several parents also commented specifically on how their children were really enjoying the home-schooling experience (though often missing their friends and classmates), feeling less stressed by the pressure of external exams, benefitting from a ‘slower pace of life’, and enjoying opportunities to re-connect as a family:

The difference in our kids is amazing they are so much happier and more relaxed the whole house is much less stressed, adults included.

I think my children have coped very well – they are settled, contented and enjoy the cocoon of home.

It has given my children more time to play freely which is positive.

My son suffers with anxiety at school and with being at home with the lockdown I find it really has helped my son focus more on school work and not the class clown or feeling anxious or worried so he definitely seems more relaxed and has the head space to study better with less stress

Some children with ASD and ADHD are benefitting

Second, and more specifically, while it has been noted by NICCY and others that many children with special educational needs have undoubtedly struggled with the lack of additional learning support, therapeutic intervention, familiar structure, leisure and respite opportunities, conversely a smaller number of other children with special educational needs have actually thrived.  Some parents in the CREU survey spoke of children with ASD and ADHD in particular whose anxiety levels have fallen, free from the social pressures of a busy school environment, away from the threat of bullying, and able to learn in a less regimented, more flexible and secure home environment:

Our son has Aspergers. He is v bright but lacks concentration. When he is in the mood to do work, we do it. He needs a lot of attention to keep him in tasks.  Generally speaking he is much less anxious than when at school, he struggles with the social side of school which results in massive anxieties and OCD behaviours. These have significantly reduced since he has been at home.

My child is currently being assessed for ADHD which does at time impact her focus and motivation and I feel she has enjoyed the flexibility/autonomy of our lessons.

I think my dyslexic son benefits as he doesn’t have the same pressures as the classroom and I can work with him 1-1 and produce much better work than when he is in a class of nearly 30 pupils. I can also work one on one to improve his attention issues.

Remote learning has benefits for pupil self-regulation

Third, lockdown has highlighted the importance of self-regulation among learners.  Schools provide a highly structured, regulated environment, with a high degree of timely accountability for the pupils as they do their work. For pupils who struggle with self-regulation, this environment can, at the very least, produce compliant learners: pupils who will turn up to class, generally do the work set by the teacher and mostly hand work in on time. In the lockdown environment, the loss of the direct experience of this structure, regulation and accountability has left pupils with much more freedom – and responsibility – to self-regulate. A recent ETI report found that many post-primary pupils struggled even with basic levels of compliance in this context, but there is evidence that other pupils managed this freedom very well, supported by learning resources from, and interactions with, their teachers.  More significantly, there is evidence from studies such as a recent school-based study in the Netherlands that learners who can self-regulate go on to achieve more highly.

So, what are the qualities exhibited by such pupils and what can we learn from them? An Education Endowment Foundation report summarises the evidence on self-regulation and metacognition, and cites a range of strategies that help pupils learn independently, including: ‘setting specific short-term goals, adopting powerful strategies for attaining the goals, monitoring performance for signs of progress, restructuring one’s physical and social context to make it compatible with one’s goals; managing time-use efficiently; self-evaluating one’s methods; attributing causation to results and adapting future methods’.

Based on the additional experience of online teaching of 14-18 year olds in one local grammar school during lockdown, it has become clear that some pupils, especially those in KS4/5, have developed sufficient self-regulation skills not only to comply with the work set, but to become fully engaged in their learning. More than that, it has given some pupils a high degree of agency in their own learning, as they have shown significant self-awareness to adapt their learning schedules and strategies based on self-reflection to align with how they learn best. These include pupils who have designed their own learning timetable for the week, using the learning support from the school as a foundation, but adapting it, based on a high degree of self-awareness, to best facilitate their own learning.

Looking ahead we would recommend that schools seek to do more to develop self-regulation skills among pupils, a view echoed by the EEF, whose report on remote learning published at the start of lockdown, made the following recommendation:

Supporting pupils to work independently can improve learning outcomes. Pupils learning at home will often need to work independently. Multiple reviews identify the value of strategies that help pupils work independently with success … Wider evidence related to metacognition and self-regulation suggests that disadvantaged pupils are likely to particularly benefit from explicit support to help them work independently, for example, by providing checklists or daily plans.

With the possibility of further school disruptions in the 2020/21 school year, the need to train pupils in self-regulation skills early upon their return to school is imperative.

Learning from lockdown

As schools transition back to a blended model of face to face and remote learning, how do we respond to what has been learnt from this time? The following questions might facilitate some self-reflection for teachers, school leaders and policy-makers:

1. How do we ensure that our approach to education after lockdown is more balanced?

In what ways can we make school less pressured, more pastoral, less assessment-driven and more focused on the well-being of individual children, while recognising the potential to build on positive experiences of family and parental engagement since March?  How do we prioritise relationships – within schools, within families and between schools and families?

2. How do we best prepare some of most vulnerable learners with special educational needs for the return to school in August/September?

It must be acknowledged that this will not be a return to school as they knew it before, and that during the last few months, new routines will have become established in settled home environments where face-to-face social interaction and communication could be kept to a minimum.  How do we ensure that these pupils’ anxiety at the prospect of the Restart is minimised, and that school itself is a safer, happier place for all learners, irrespective of their needs?

3. How do we best support the full range of pupils’ self-regulation habits as schools open more widely?

How do we find ways of fostering and encouraging the continued growth of effective self-regulation shown by some pupils? In what ways do we ensure that the re-introduction of the highly structured environment of school does not cause them to lose the agency they have developed during remote learning? How can we find ways of sharing this effective practice with those pupils who have struggled more with this, encouraging them to learn from the example of their peers? And, how do we explicitly teach and upskill all pupils in the learnable techniques of self-regulation and metacognition?

We not have not sought here to deny or minimise the reality of the challenges faced by many children and their parents during lockdown (and these have already been well documented).  Instead we set out to look for learning opportunities as a result of positive experiences where they did occur, despite adversity.  In reporting these here, we hope to have provided some encouragement, though also many further questions to consider together over the coming days.  In so doing, we have every confidence in the educational workforce of Northern Ireland to rise to the challenges that lie ahead.

Bridging the Lockdown Learning Gap (Part Two)

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

In the first instalment of this blog, I considered two initial questions around the lockdown learning gap: (1) Is there a lockdown learning gap? and (2) What does the lockdown learning gap look like?

In this second instalment, we turn to the third key question: what steps can we take to bridge the lockdown learning gap?

Dr Noel Purdy is Director of the Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement at Stranmillis University College, Belfast.

Bridging the lockdown learning gap

Over half a century ago, in Education and the Working Class Jackson and Marsden (1966) highlighted a system of educational apartheid in England which benefitted the elite and disadvantaged working class children. More recently Diane Reay has argued that, despite a common curriculum and many other changes to the educational landscape, ‘educational success is still restricted to a few’ (2017, p.177) and that the winners are predominantly those from families with wealth, influential social networks and a history of educational success. Reay argues that the upper classes and most of the middle classes have been ‘insulated’ from the last decade of austerity and its consequences, while the working classes have struggled. Reading the emerging research studies of lockdown learning experiences across the UK (Sutton Trust, 2020; IFS, 2020; Walsh et al., 2020) leaves little doubt that once again children from working class backgrounds with less educated parents are struggling most, with less access to online resources, less time spent learning at home, and less support from their parents. Once again, it seems, there is no ‘insulation’ for those already disadvantaged in our education system and society at large. Instead, the social injustice of the lockdown learning gap is striking, and as we consider practical blended strategies to adopt over the coming months of (at best) part-time schooling supported by further home-schooling, we must be mindful that the gap will not be bridged easily or quickly.

In the figure below, based on a reading of the most recent research, supplemented by my own convictions, and adapted for a new, untested educational landscape, I set out what I see as the seven key ways to bridge the lockdown learning gap, followed by seven underpinning foundations:

Pastoral Support for Pupils

The first practical consideration has to be effective pastoral support for pupils all of whom, at the very least, have lived through the crisis of a global pandemic that none of us (as adults) have ever experienced in our lifetimes. Many will have experienced the uncertainty of their parents being furloughed or losing their jobs, some will have felt the hunger of reduced family incomes and lived off food banks, others will have seen at first hand the devastating effects of COVID-19 and lost loved ones, especially grandparents, and will be experiencing the pain of bereavement. It must be recognised that many pupils will need emotional reassurance and support, and will feel anxious about leaving home to enter a strangely different, socially distanced school environment. Schools already have highly-skilled pastoral teams, but they should be prepared to encounter many more emotional health and wellbeing needs in the months to follow, and should adopt a child-centred approach of whole-school understanding and trauma-sensitive ‘flexible consistency’ to ensure that all children feel physically, socially, emotionally and academically safe. Pastoral care is a feature of every classroom, and all teachers must be encouraged and empowered to show compassion, understanding and sensitivity to children whose experience of lockdown may have been completely at odds with their own.

Quality Blended Teaching and Learning

The second priority has to be quality blended teaching and learning. In September it is likely that pupils will be in school at most 50% of the time, so there will still be a need for effective provision of remote learning. Some teachers naturally feel out of their comfort zones, but I would reassure them that the key elements of effective pedagogy remain the same as before, irrespective of the teaching medium: clear learning intentions, engaging content, differentiated tasks, opportunities for a range of meaningful pupil activities, and timely formative feedback on work submitted. Our recent report of parents’ experiences of home-schooling in Northern Ireland also revealed that almost a quarter of homes did not have access to a printer.  Others were struggling to afford the cost of printer paper and ink. As a result, some schools have already signalled their intention to offer printed hand-outs which is welcome. Creating online quizzes rather than asking pupils to print pdfs to complete, scan and submit is also something that can reduce inequalities as well as helping to reduce a teacher’s marking load.

Curricular Innovation

As my colleagues Dr Sharon Jones and Dr Glenda Walsh have suggested in their recent CREU blogs, there are, thirdly, opportunities for curricular innovation in the post-lockdown learning environment. While formal changes to the curriculum will take time, teachers can immediately explore the flexibility of the existing curriculum to integrate more outdoor learning play opportunities, to focus on the positive elements of character education within Personal Development and Mutual Understanding (Primary) and Learning for Life and Work (Post-Primary) and, I would argue, to make opportunities to discuss and process children’s experiences of the past six months. Moreover, there have been some wonderful examples in the past of how school communities have come together in the wake of natural disasters (e.g. Carol Mutch’s work following the 2010-11 New Zealand earthquakes) through creative projects to recount, illustrate or commemorate their own experiences and stories.

Professional Learning Opportunities for Teachers

Fourth, teachers have worked hard in challenging circumstances to upskill themselves, but ground-up initiatives like @BlendED_NI illustrate that there remains a skills gap across the profession and an urgent need for Professional Learning Opportunities for Teachers. The key considerations here are the availability and affordability of such learning opportunities. Stranmillis has recently provided free CPD to over 300 teachers on its Remote Teaching and Learning course (see website for details of all Stranmillis professional development courses). The other obvious concerns here are teachers’ own access to the internet, availability of appropriate hardware and software, and teachers’ own need to maintain a work-life balance. While there is much to learn from online courses, recent experiences have also illustrated the potential from emerging online ‘communities of practice’ where materials are increasingly shared openly, and much-needed guidance offered by peers.

Focused Learning Support

Fifth, there will be a need for focused learning support for pupils in September. Although pupils are likely to be in school only part-time, it will be important to use some of that time to quickly assess what exactly are the learning needs of the different children in each class, and to consider approaches to support. For those children on the SEN register, the additional learning and therapeutic support which was often partially or completely absent during lockdown, can be restored but it is important to note that budgets are already incredibly tight in schools and as the 2019 Northern Ireland Affairs Committee inquiry on educational funding highlighted, SEN spending and classroom assistant support are often among the first cuts to be made as school leaders struggle to balance their budgets. Providing additional focused learning support without additional funding will simply not be possible.

Catch-up Tutoring

Sixth, and returning to the opening discussion of the social injustice of lockdown learning, the widest learning gaps to be bridged will require more than skillfully differentiated classroom teaching. For those children who have been engaged in little or no home learning since 23 March, the challenges of re-entering the educational system cannot be overestimated. In response, there are several options for catch-up tutoring. One is the summer school model which has been adopted by schools across Harlem Children’s Zone and which endeavours to use vacation time to fast-track the recovery process. Another model is to enlist community volunteers or university students to offer free tutoring to disadvantaged pupils. The recent EEF report notes that a pre-COVID evaluation of low-cost tutoring provided by third-level students generated a positive impact on pupil learning of three additional months’ progress. As ever, there are significant challenges in meeting the learning needs of the most disadvantaged children, including demands on teacher time, affordability, safeguarding, and ongoing digital access inequity.

Enhanced Parental Engagement

Finally, enhanced parental engagement: the Stranmillis report on homeschooling during the COVID-19 crisis revealed harrowing experiences by some parents and high levels of stress and exhaustion among others, especially those on the front line employed as Essential or Key Workers. However, many parents also used the survey to comment on how much they had enjoyed spending time home-schooling with their children, and had felt closer than ever before to their learning. This report should make essential reading for schools as they seek to capitalize on some of the positives from the lockdown. While parents often requested more guidance on how to support their children’s learning and how to navigate the complex range of learning platforms available, this shouldn’t disguise the fact that they want to be involved and, coming out of lockdown, I would contend that this is an opportunity for schools to build on, improving communication with home, welcoming dialogue and embracing the notion of parents as learning partners.

A Further Seven Foundations to Bridge the Lockdown Learning Gap

While these are important practical steps to be taken, the figure illustrates a further seven foundations upon which the bridge must be built. Of foremost importance, of course, is the health and safety of the entire school community (pupils, all staff, parents, visitors) and it goes without saying that schools must follow the most recent government guidance on social distancing, PPE, hand sanitizing etc. as there are very real and justifiable concerns that a return to school as part of a broader easement of lockdown restrictions could lead to a rise in the R number, as was briefly the case in Denmark following the re-opening of schools there on 15 April. Throughout this crisis we have seen excellent examples of effective school leadership, with gifted principals taking difficult decisions with little guidance to help them, communicating regularly, informing and reassuring the school community. Given the unique circumstances of each school, school leaders will continue to need to adapt broad-stroke guidance to their individual school circumstances. The underlying principles of pupil voice and inclusion/equality of access remain prime considerations to ensure that pupils are involved meaningfully and have a valuable role to play in their schools, and that no one is left behind or excluded, willfully or by oversight. Regular, clear and consistent communication at and between all levels has also emerged as a much valued element of a school’s response to a crisis. I would argue that this will be particularly important in the approach to the new academic year, when staff and pupils will naturally be feeling anxious about the return to school, though not to school as they knew it. With technological support, it will be possible to communicate directly to pupils and parents, showing them (via photos and/or video) what schools and classrooms will look like, thus alleviating some of the understandable anxiety that is already growing. Adopting a research-informed approach is also more important now than ever for educators. If the current health crisis has shown anything, it is that the scientific community has united as never before, sharing expertise, making research open-access, adapting as new findings emerge and helping to inform those charged with making policy decisions. There is an onus on those of us who are researchers to work hard to disseminate our findings to policy-makers and to those on the front line in schools. All of this requires generous government funding if it is to become a reality rather than an aspiration, at the very time when budgets look to be tighter than ever before. However, this pandemic has demonstrated that there is the potential for additional spending where the need is deemed to be great enough. So why not now?

Is this not the moment to invest in educational recovery, to facilitate the purchase of the latest technology (hardware, software, internet access, printers) to enable effective blended learning, to support the efforts of schools to upskill staff through high-quality professional development, and to provide learning support to those in danger of being educationally as well as socially ‘left behind’? There is no quick fix, no silver bullet. Bridging the lockdown learning gap will require vision, courage, tenacity, skill and investment. It is time to get started.

Bridging the Lockdown Learning Gap (Part One)

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

Dr Noel Purdy is Director of the Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement at Stranmillis University College, Belfast.

Last Friday afternoon (5th June 2020) 369 educators from across Northern Ireland took part in a ground-breaking webinar on the theme of ‘Charting the Way: Conversations on education in NI ahead of September 2020’. It was by far the largest and most relevant-to-practice webinar on which I have ever had the privilege of being a panellist, and is a remarkable testament to the innovation of the @Blended_NI team who organised it in less than a week. In its sheer scale, it was also a clear sign of the thirst among dedicated classroom teachers for practical guidance, support and reassurance as they face the challenge of an educational earthquake (revolutions are planned after all) that no one could have predicted even six months ago. The webinar discussion was wide-ranging but one of the key issues to emerge was the likelihood of a ‘lockdown learning gap’ arising from the current pandemic crisis during which the vast majority of children are not being educated at school.

In response I would suggest that there are three key questions to consider: (1) Is there a lockdown learning gap? (2) What does the lockdown learning gap look like? and (3) What steps can we take to bridge the lockdown learning gap?  In the first instalment of this blog I will address questions 1 and 2.  In the second instalment I will consider question 3.

Is there a lockdown learning gap?

The short answer to this is that we can’t know yet for sure, as we don’t have reliable evidence from large-scale assessment tests to tell us the long-term impact. That will doubtless come over the coming months. In the meantime, we can however look at likely indicators from a number of recent studies: for instance, the pre-lockdown Ofcom survey revealed that online access is mediated by family background and that children in working class homes are less likely than those in middle class homes to access the internet via either a tablet (59% vs. 72%) or a mobile phone (49% vs. 62%); the early-lockdown Sutton Trust Report in April confirmed what I had predicted in an earlier blog that the lockdown has exacerbated existing inequalities in our education system with children from poorer backgrounds having less access to online resources and parental support, spending less time learning, and submitting less work than their less disadvantaged peers and those attending private schools. A month later, a report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies found that children from better-off families are spending 30% more time on home learning each week (amounting to more than two additional school weeks in total, assuming schools re-open here in late August/September) and have more access to individualised online resources than those from poorer families.

On 20 May our own Stranmillis report on Home-Schooling in Northern Ireland during the COVID-19 Crisis reported on a survey of over 2000 parents and found wide disparities in parental experiences of home-schooling, often mediated by their level of education and employment status. Experiences ranged from, on the one hand, confident, highly educated parents relishing the opportunity to spend more time learning alongside their children, safely cocooned from the pandemic threat, to, on the other hand, highly stressed working parents struggling to access resources, lacking confidence in their own abilities and battling to motivate their children to engage in learning during the ‘nightmare’ of lockdown. Based on these robust research reports, it is clear that there will undoubtedly be a lockdown learning gap. I would further suggest that the gap is likely to be wider than the traditional loss of learning experienced during the summer months, because unlike the normal two-month summer vacation, there will not have been such widely divergent experiences between children who have effectively been home-tutored by degree-educated parents and children who, through no fault of their own, have engaged in little or no learning at all.

What does the lockdown learning gap look like?

A report published earlier this month by the Education Endowment Foundation has attempted to predict the impact of school closures on the attainment gap, based on a rapid evidence assessment of a total of 11 previous studies of learning loss carried out since 1995. The EEF predictions suggest that the current closures will widen the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers by a median estimate of 36% (with a range between 11% and 75%). The authors acknowledge the limitations of their review which (inevitably) is based on studies of summer learning gaps rather than the experiences of previous current pandemic crises. The report notes that sustained effort will be required over the coming months to help disadvantaged pupils catch up.

There has been much general discussion of learning needs but little specific about the particular learning needs of pupils on their return to school. Consequently, I have developed a typology of learning needs (see below), beginning with the need for teachers to address pre-lockdown learning which may be lost (and needs reteaching) or rusty (and needs refreshing) as might be expected after a lengthy break from traditional schooling of 5 months. This experience is similar to what might normally be expected following the summer vacation, and teachers are already skilled at recapping and refreshing knowledge and skills in September before moving on to new learning material.

A typology of lockdown learning needs

While this might represent relatively familiar ground for teachers, the particular features of lockdown learning loss are different: based on the studies cited above, we can also expect many children to have missed lockdown learning where there was little or no engagement at all with learning activities since March (through no fault of their own) and where catch-up teaching is required; shaky lockdown learning (requiring consolidation) where lockdown learning has been partial, incomplete or insecure, the result of a range of possible factors including poor or miscomprehension, lack of pupil motivation, inadequate parental support, and limited opportunities for individualised teaching and/or feedback; and minimal lockdown learning (needing extension) where learning has been rudimentary, covering minimum content but falling short of the wealth of differentiated extension activities that would normally have been provided in school.

Typology of Lockdown Learning Needs

The fundamental consequence of this is that additional time and investment will undoubtedly be required to identify and address the various learning needs of individual pupils over the coming months. So let’s not imagine for a moment that this is going to be ‘business as usual’ in August/September.  With the prospect of widely divergent attainment levels following more than three months of widely divergent home learning experiences, teachers will need to draw on all of their professional expertise to meet the challenges ahead.

So, I would argue that there will undoubtedly be a lockdown learning gap come August/September, and that it will be wider than what might be experienced after the customary two-month summer vacation. Furthermore, I would contend that the nature of the learning deficit will be more varied and differentiated than ever before, including lost, rusty, missed, shaky and minimal learning, all of which need to be addressed by professional, dedicated and compassionate teachers. In the second instalment of this blog, I will consider the third and most significant key question: what steps can we take to bridge the lockdown learning gap?

Life after Lockdown in the Early Years Classroom: Embracing Challenges as Opportunities!

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

Dr Glenda Walsh (Head of Early Years Education, Stranmillis University College) and Mrs Stephanie Gillespie (Nursery School Principal and Early Years Specialist)

Preparations are underway in Northern Ireland for the reopening of all schools in September 2020, after a long period of lockdown, having been closed to the majority of pupils since mid-March. Clearly, navigating the challenges brought to the Education sector by a global pandemic invites decision-makers to do more than simply tinkering cautiously with pre-lockdown policies and practices. For the youngest children in our school settings, there are principles of early years pedagogy that endure, and we advocate for all that we know to be fundamental to the high quality and playful experience that is the right of every young learner. In this blog, we intend to address some of the obstacles specifically facing the early years phase of education and to offer potential solutions to ensure that the needs and interests of our young children are fully embraced. Major seminal studies (e.g. Heckman et al, 2010 and Schweinhart et al, 2005) have clearly showcased time after time the importance of getting it right in the early years of schooling, not only for children’s learning and development, but also for society and the economy as a whole. Let’s ensure that as the restart to school begins, we don’t let our youngest children down!

The post is structured using the framework of priorities outlined recently by the Minister of Education in the proposed Restart programme.

Physical Protection in the Early Years

A key priority is Physical Protection to ‘support, protect and enable our workforce as they lead the return to “new normal” education arrangements – protecting learners also.’ Evidence coming from the Danish model of schools’ re-opening shows that risk can be managed through a variety of measures. In some Danish early years settings this has meant adjusting class size to ‘bubbles’ of no more than 10. This is more straightforward in Denmark as the average class size at primary is 19 pupils, whereas the average Foundation Stage class size in NI is over 25. Cognisance needs to be taken of this difference and flexibility given as settings seek to put adequate measures in place for individual contexts. A ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach will not do. However, as we explore the issue of bubbles within our early years classrooms/settings, perhaps it is time to relish the opportunity of reduced class sizes and enhanced adult teacher-child ratios, something that we in the early years sector in Northern Ireland and the UK in general have been calling for over a long period of time.

Indeed a recent Guardian article referring to the Danish experience of re-opening schools reported that smaller groups bring a higher degree of wellbeing for pupils, and give the teachers more contact with them during the day. Whether we need to make use of a volunteer workforce as was the case in the NHS or embrace a blended learning approach to facilitate such a reduction in class numbers, let’s be creative in resolving this dilemma to allow our teachers to build those warm and secure relationships that are so paramount in an early years classroom, tune into all young children’s needs and interests and afford them learning opportunities that allow them to reach their full potential.

Outdoor learning is safer, and supports young children’s development

Maintaining a distance of up to 2m has become the new norm in many settings that have re-opened internationally and more recently in England. Images of desks spaced out in our classrooms, with painted markings on the floors, have flashed across our TV screens and the immediate response of those who know and work with our youngest children is that such measures will never be a complete success in an early years classroom. But how else do we keep our youngest children and their teachers safe? The answer lies in extending the early years classroom beyond its four walls and embracing the natural outdoors, as scientific advice has indicated that the spread of such a disease is less prevalent outside. Our Scandinavian colleagues have clearly showcased the potential of the outdoors, not only in terms of the available space to enable a degree of distancing to take place, but to zone off particular areas and through the use of, for instance, coloured arm bands, encourage children to play with these same children on a daily basis without being in contact with any other class peers. In this way, we would recommend the bubble idea being practised not only indoors but also in the outdoors. In addition, according to the Open University’s OPEN space Research Centre, there is a wealth of evidence emphasising that time spent outdoors increases life expectancy, improves well-being, reduces symptoms of depression and increases a child’s ability to function in school. Time spent in the outdoors is surely needed now more than ever where children can engage in a variety of playful experiences in their bubble, whether it be building dens, exploring wildlife and gardening, playing in the mud kitchen, engaging in simple scientific experiments with water or undertaking a range of physical exercises. Making effective use of the outdoors is therefore no longer a choice for our early years teachers/practitioners; it is an essential.

Hygiene and Infection Control Protocols

Adjusted hygiene procedures based on sound risk-assessment will undoubtedly be reassuring for parents and staff alike. Some schools in England have opted for handwashing on arrival at school and at hourly intervals. Nationally and internationally, schools have staggered starting and leaving times. Some staff understandably have expressed their anxieties about being adequately protected and there is discussion about the wearing of masks, visors and gowns. We would urge a risk-benefits approach at this point for our youngest children in Preschool and Foundation Stage. Early years practitioners are very creative and will rise to the challenge of implementing hygiene protocols that are less remote and possibly alarming for our youngest learners. Our young children are continually expressing their deep thinking around issues that adults might feel they alone have concerns about. One 4-year-old recently put on his Spiderman costume and then his hand gel and decided he was “going on a mission to save my friends! The virus is hurting people”. Likewise, many creative teachers have been encouraging young children to practise appropriate hygiene measures through the use of popular songs and rhymes such as Baby Shark, Happy Birthday and the Elbow Dab.

The need to constantly clean resources, in particular play resources, is causing some teachers to suggest that play may have to be abandoned for a period of time. However, the abandonment of play, in such a time of crisis, could only increase the anxieties that many children are already experiencing and result in a much more challenging transition back into school. We fully appreciate that the safety of children and staff is paramount, but making use of open-ended and natural materials in this current climate could act as a possible substitute. We suggest the use of junk materials in the form of cardboard boxes, rope, string, polystyrene, plastic bottles, blocks and containers to name but a few, and an array of natural materials including bark, seeds, mud, stones, pebbles, leaves, twigs and straw, all of which could be put in the bin after any play session and easily replaced for the next one. Early years specialists have been advocating a ‘less is more’ environment in early years settings for many years, where the emphasis on artificial resources is greatly reduced. Embracing such creative possibilities will enable young children to continue to enjoy the power of playful learning in a safe and secure manner.

Play resources are plentiful in the outdoors

Standards of Learning in the Early Years

Even before the Covid-19 outbreak, many in the Early Years community of practice were concerned at the downward pressure of the curriculum particularly for learners in the Foundation Stage, leading to a narrowing of the curriculum and an over-emphasis on core skills. Whilst an effort to provide a catch-up curriculum or to ‘maintain (or re-dress) educational standards’ is certainly needed in our schools, we might ask ourselves if such a ‘re-dress’ is necessary in the early years. Children’s academic learning may not have been progressed in the same way as it might have been at school, but it is important to note that many children have developed an array of skills and dispositions during this period of crisis that may be advantageous to them for future learning and indeed for life in general. A recent report on parents’ experiences of home-schooling, conducted by the Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement at Stranmillis University College, brought to our attention how young children, as compared with their older counterparts, appear to have enjoyed the remote learning experience at home with the support of their teachers and seemed quite motivated by it. Indeed Paul Ramchandani, Professor of Play in the PEDAL Centre at the University of Cambridge, has cautioned against turning homes into schools during the lockdown and instead recommended the power of play for all young learners.

We know that young children flourish with a holistic play-based approach. They especially need to practise skills that can only be facilitated by a rich, unhurried and play-based experiential curriculum. Such a playful learning experience affords opportunities for teachers to tune into the needs and capabilities of all young learners, providing each individual child with the support and/or challenge he/she requires and in so doing enabling a relaxed and pressure-free environment for all young learners as they transition into the school context. The ‘Pedagogy of Play’ research at the Harvard Graduate School of Education is particularly illuminating in terms of cultivating school cultures that value and support learning through play and provide us with much food for thought at this present time. The impetus is there for ‘outside the box’ thinking on how this playful approach might be facilitated in the new norm. Dr. Bo Stjerne Thomsen (Chair of Learning through Play in the LEGO foundation) writes of how the International School in Billund, Denmark transitioned to a distant learning approach using playful pedagogies, in recognition of the fact that children have an amazing natural potential to learn through play. In recent months in Northern Ireland it has similarly been encouraging to see the excellent response of the Education sector in supporting Home Learning through an engaging and creative use of online platforms (e.g. https://www.stran.ac.uk/ideas-for-active-minds/). It will be important for our youngest learners that any blended approach continues to incorporate active and playful methods for our youngest learners rather than a retreat into a more formal and paper-based approach or indeed an over-emphasis on digital learning, the negative impact of which has been clearly articulated in a recent report by Australia’s Gonski Institute for Education.

Well-being

Playful interactions and opportunities may be more essential now than ever. Mental health experts have advocated that play is prioritised rather than diminished when young children return to school due to the possible impact that the lockdown might have had on children’s mental health.

Recent experiences in one Covid cluster hub school in Northern Ireland reveal children’s emotional uncertainty and its impact on their mental health and wellbeing. Certainly, the voice of one 5-year-old highlights the need for social interaction and playful experience:

“I hate this Coronavirus. All I want to do is see my granny and grandpa. Why don’t people just do what they’re told and then all this will be over and I can play with my friends?”

Young children’s voices reveal their deep need for emotional connection, their thinking and possible underlying anxiety: “I miss my friends.

“When is all this Coronavirus going to be over? Where’s the hand sanitiser? You have to use it so you don’t get coronavirus. Will I ever go to nursery to see my friends again?”

In the words of another young child,

“It makes me very sad that I can’t see my friends and my teacher. I really miss the playground – especially the climbing frame.”

We therefore welcome the Minister identifying ‘the mental health and emotional wellbeing of the education workforce and learners as they return to education’ as a focus of the Restart Programme.

The youngest children’s voices remind us of the necessity of prioritising children’s play and social interaction with friends rather than focusing on academic progress. Many parents and teachers will understandably be anxious about academic progression and of course there will be a time to prioritise these areas in future. But as the lockdown restrictions begin to ease and a new normal is introduced into our classrooms, it is important to emphasise a balanced approach and to explicitly highlight the social and emotional benefits of play and socialising with peers for children in Nursery and the Foundation Stage. A risk-benefits approach, which recognises the benefits of play in helping relieve stress and anxiety among the children while simultaneously ensuring children are not exposed to unnecessary risk, is therefore paramount.

 

Back to School: Curriculum Matters and Covid-19

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

Every year the prospect of returning to school seems to come upon us earlier and earlier. Even before the summer holidays, shops are filled with rows of shiny new shoes, rails of crisp shirts, schoolbags, and bundles of socks in dazzling shades of clean. This summer in Northern Ireland, as we take ‘baby steps’ towards emerging from lockdown, the prospect of a new school year brings excitement, but also uncertainty. Governors, Principals and teachers are trying to figure out how best to welcome back children and young people, and establish routines that foster health and well-being, both physical and mental. All the talk of the ‘new normal’ can be daunting, for no-one really knows what the experience of school in 2020-21 will be like. The situation presents logistical conundrums to challenge even the most gifted of organisational minds.

Time for Change

But there are other questions too. One that lies close to my own heart is curriculum. When we do get back to school, whatever that might look like, how should we guide the learning of our children and young people? And in this unexpected context, how might we begin to understand success and achievement? Reflecting in The Guardian on education before Covid-19 George Monbiot wrote: ‘In an age in which we urgently need to cooperate, we are educated for individual success in competition with others. Governments tell us that the purpose of education is to get ahead of other people or, collectively, of other nations… But nobody wins the human race’.

The 2007 Northern Ireland Curriculum is a skills-infused framework curriculum that aims to ‘empower young people to achieve their potential and to make informed and responsible decisions through their lives’. This is commendable, but the Northern Ireland Curriculum is 13 years old, and its design was for a Northern Ireland before Covid-19. The word ‘unprecedented’ can feel overused, but the fact remains that we haven’t known times quite like these before. As we look ahead into the new school year and beyond, and in light of the seismic impact of Covid-19, globally and locally, not least in the lives children and young people, a fresh focus on curriculum seems timely and wise. In this piece, I’d like to consider three areas of learning that merit particular attention in our time and place: outdoor learning; the arts and humanities; and character education.

Outdoor Education

We are all aware that we can control infection more effectively outdoors. Furthermore in a recent article in The Guardian Libby Brooks highlighted the growing weight of evidence that suggests that outdoor learning is intrinsically beneficial. For example, learning outside offers great possibilities for building resilience. And if resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity, this is surely worth developing as we move forward and prepare to live with Covid-19. During lockdown, many of us have been spending more time than usual outside, and as a result we have become more aware of the wonder and beauty of the environment, and the value, both mental and physical, of exercise. We should build on this momentum as we think about curriculum in the months and years ahead. A recent study in Scotland points to the rich learning opportunities of growing food in school gardens, even in urban areas.

Arts and Humanities

Some of the most inspiring a stories in the media during the Covid-19 crisis globally have centred around concern for the good of other people. Most memorably, in Italy, professional musicians sang and performed from their balconies. By sharing their skills in such a beautiful yet simple way, they brought joy to their neighbours and, thanks to technology, to us. Music, they said, can’t be quarantined.

Artists across the world have been facing enormous challenges during the current crisis. But in the middle of it all they have found very creative ways to offer hope. While excellence in science, mathematics and economics are inarguably essential as we seek to develop a vaccine for Covid-19, we should be mindful of the hopefulness and value of the arts and humanities. History, ancient and modern, has much to teach us in relation to our response to disease and pandemics. Moreover, in a fascinating piece, Nathan Fleschner writes of the kind of thinking that studying even the theory of music can foster. He argues convincingly that the arts and humanities can equip young people with the thinking skills needed in our current world, awash as it is with data and fake news.

Character Education

During lockdown, acts of kindness have multiplied in communities around the globe. Here in Northern Ireland, teachers have been at the forefront of magnificent efforts to support the children, young people and their families, and it has been heartening to see local colleagues honoured in this year’s National Association for Pastoral Care in Education awards.

We know that academic excellence is important, but in times of crisis we learn that compassion and kindness are of infinitely greater worth. We should explore initiatives that infuse curriculum with the development of virtues such as The Good Project and the Kindness Curriculum. There are more helpful resources online compiled by the Red Cross.  Another fine project is the Narnia Virtues: a Character Education English Curriculum that encourages the cultivation of good character through engagement with the Narnia Novels by Belfast’s very own C.S. Lewis. Seamus Heaney in his Five Fables, also placed value on the power of story in the development of moral imagination.

Of course great stories are told in many different languages and not just in English. The global resurgence in popularity of Albert Camus’s La Peste during the Covid-19 crisis is testament to this. The power of engaging the imaginations of children in the face of global challenges through story was considered at a recent French studies conference at Stranmillis University College. One of the delegates we welcomed to Belfast is Helen Patuck, who has since published an inspiring picture book to help children understand Covid-19, translated in several languages.

In a recent curriculum blog, I considered French philosopher Paul Ricœur for whom story was the gateway to understanding not only ourselves, but our relationship with the world and others. Ricœur argued that the story of each human being is precious. Children and young people across Northern Ireland and beyond will be returning to school with many different stories, and we should value each one of them.

Conclusion

In different ways, outdoor learning, the arts and humanities, and character education have the potential to generate hope. We must keep this in mind as we contemplate going back to school, as we review curriculum together, seeking to guide the learning of our children and young people, and prepare them to live well and achieve success in the future.

Sharon Jones is Senior Lecturer at Stranmillis University College and a CREU member. She sits on the Editorial Board of The Curriculum Journal.

Report: Home-Schooling in Northern Ireland during the COVID-19 Crisis

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

The past few months have been utterly remarkable. They have: forced parents/carers to assume a greater role than ever before in their child/ren’s education; tested schools and teachers to their limits in terms of adapting fast to providing (mostly online) resources for home learning; and thrown children into a new, confined online learning environment at home. All amid a broader context of fear and uncertainty caused by a global pandemic.

Despite the upheaval, it is vital that our children’s education and our families’ wellbeing is monitored and understood by policymakers, service providers, and the research community. It is likely that the shutdown is leading to widening educational inequality. The Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement ran an online survey on parents/carers’ experiences of home-schooling during the lockdown in early May 2020, which received over 2000 responses from across Northern Ireland. The survey asked how parents/carers were approaching home-schooling, how schools were supporting them, and what could be done to better support their households.

Click here to download the full report, and read below for a summary of the key findings.

1. Parental education and employment status make a big difference

The level of parental education and employment status appears to mediate a strong divergence in experience. Parents/carers educated to university level are over 4 times more likely to be working from home than parents/carers with no qualifications, who are much more likely to have been furloughed. Those with university-level education are the most likely to become directly involved in their children’s home-schooling through teaching them directly (26.7%) or actively supporting their children’s learning (52.6%). In contrast, parents/carers without a degree are more likely to report lower levels of confidence in managing home-education, and to report simply ‘monitoring’ their child’s learning.

2. Essential Workers are least able to devote time to home-schooling

This survey highlights the particular challenges faced by Essential Workers. They are least likely to engage directly in their child/ren’s home-schooling (e.g. least likely to teach or actively support their learning) and are most likely to encourage their child/ren to learn independently as a result of having to work shifts outside the home. Essential Workers are often working longer hours than before and are at greatest risk of becoming infected with the COVID-19 virus. While not universal among the group of Essential Workers, the strongest expressions of frustration and desperation came from within this group, struggling with physical exhaustion, fear of infection, an inability to spend as much time with their children to support their learning, and, in several cases, a resulting sense of guilt and anger.

3. Parents/Carers are calling for live teaching and pre-printed resources

Almost a quarter of respondents do not have a printer, and many expressed a desire for more printed packs of work to be provided and complained of the costs incurred in providing printer ink and paper. We also found that only half of children have their own device to access online resources for schoolwork.

When asked for a single recommendation to improve home-schooling, parents/carers’ most common call was more live interaction with teachers. This could be for as little as twenty minutes once a week, either to introduce new curricular topics, or (especially with younger children) to allow some peer or pastoral interaction to raise motivation levels. We acknowledge the valid concerns of teaching unions and school leaders around the safeguarding of children and teachers, and encourage creative thinking about how the benefits of teacher/pupil interaction may be achieved safely.

4. Lockdown is affecting each child differently

The study provides some insights into children’s experiences of the lockdown learning period. Older children tend to prefer learning at school (and miss school more) while younger children are more likely to prefer the home environment. Most parents/carers suggest that children’s social skills and behaviour haven’t changed since schools closed. The area where children are most likely to have benefited is in their emotional well-being, where around 1 in 5 claim that there has been an improvement. By contrast, 3 in 5 claim that their child/ren’s level of motivation to learn has become worse since home-schooling began. Overall, we observe a very broad range of experiences, from accounts of more relaxed children enjoying peaceful family time and playing outside or engaging in many different leisure activities within the home, to children who are missing their friends and their teachers, struggling to learn, and falling further behind their peers.

“It’s flipping hard work”

The purpose of this report is not to ascribe blame, to undermine professional reputations, or to expose individuals. We share a joint responsibility to improve the situation for everyone, especially those disadvantaged by this continued period of home-schooling.

To quote some respondents, it is clear that for many engaged in home-schooling, “it’s flipping hard work”. “The novelty has worn off”, and “Nobody chose this”. Let us hope that we can learn the lessons of the past eight weeks so that all children can learn more successfully, happily and equitably for the remainder of the lockdown period and beyond.