There can be little doubt that this lockdown feels an awful lot more difficult to get through than the last. Perhaps it’s because of the gloom and miserable weather; the lack of light and ‘January blues’. Or maybe it’s because the patience of the country has worn thin having gone through the false hope that one set of restrictions in 2020 might be enough. It could be genuine dismay at seeing the scenes in overrun hospitals up and down the country. There is the chance that people are just sick of Zoom calls and working from home, and that they miss daily interactions with others, feeling like prisoners in their own homes. As far as I’m concerned, the closing of schools to the majority of pupils has a large bearing on this. I can live with the decision to do it - it just feels like crucial lessons which should have been learned from the last one have been ignored.

I recently read an interesting article in the New Statesman by Sam Freedman entitled ‘An Urgent Action Plan to Mitigate the Damage of School Closures’. Bemoaning the lack of government foresight and prior action, it outlined a number of issues which would need to be addressed moving forward to close the growing gap between the students who have the necessary skills and resources to cope during this phase of remote learning and those severely disadvantaged. It highlighted a number of problem areas: the paucity of technology; the limitations placed on teachers in terms of skills within the online environment; the lack of support for parents and the dearth of accessible and user-friendly content to assist learning.

Being part of Bellevue Education has helped the College get to grips with the issues which Sam Freedman highlighted. Every student at the College can borrow a Chromebook where needed to support their learning. In addition to this, I was heartened to see that Bellevue Education made a significant contribution of laptops, chargers and keyboards to growing free schools across London and Berkshire. 

Mark Greatrex, the chief executive of BPET, who supports the schools, said “The donation from Bellevue Education will have a huge impact on families [who qualify for free school meals]. Supporting the hardest-to-reach families and helping all pupils connect to our high-quality home learning provision is a key role for schools at this time. Thank you, Bellevue!” 

Of course, on a larger scale, the government has been playing catch up to fill the gap, and there are still a large number of students with no means of getting online. Ofcom estimated last year that between 1.14m and 1.78m children in total in the UK have no home access to a laptop, desktop or tablet. By January 8th, the DfE stated that it had delivered 560,000 laptops and tablets to schools: a huge amount, but not enough. The paucity of technology is hitting those in poverty hardest.

Bellevue has also instigated IT and remote learning support through the Education Directors and Head of Digital Development Adam Atkinson, a friend and colleague within the group. He has helped to bring staff together to form clusters, and assisted staff with ideas, methods and techniques to support their delivery. He provides tutorials for teachers across the group to ensure that they are meeting high standards. I know that some staff have found it difficult to embrace the new requirements of the online world, but those within the College, and as part of the wider group, need not feel alone in these travails.

The one group of people arguably hit hardest in this lockdown are parents. Research from Oxford University outlined that levels of anxiety and stress increased due to lockdown, with many parents finding ‘difficulty relaxing’, becoming ‘easily upset or agitated’ or feeling ‘fearful and worried’. In November, the Duchess of Cambridge warned of a dramatic increase in loneliness and a rise in a sense of being ‘cut off’ and ‘isolated’. Parents seek structure, guidance and reassurance but not ‘punitive’ amounts of worksheets for their sons and daughters and the problem seems more acute in secondary schools, with 45% of those with secondary-age children concerned about their children's education and future, compared to 32% of those with young children. For our part, we’ve reached out to the parent body, and I’ve made myself available on four separate evenings to discuss issues, big or small, with them. I enjoyed a chat with several of them last week, offering reassurance during uncertain times.

At the College, we’ve enjoyed a strong academic tradition, and have the luxury of being able to offer stability in teaching and, through our small class sizes, the ability to provide extensive levels of support for our students where necessary. Transition during the first lockdown was hectic, but teachers worked incredibly hard to make it work shifting classroom lessons over the course of a weekend to live online sessions. The feedback we received from parents showed that it was effective:

“Thank you for all the lessons and projects that the pupils have been receiving and all the support given to them at this challenging time.  The College has been amazing throughout all of this and we are really grateful.”

While it is great to receive such feedback, I am aware that we can, of course, do more. There was a certain sense of togetherness during the first lockdown, which occurred, largely because a unique set of circumstances had been created. It was, to an extent, a novelty which some students really warmed to. In many ways, students at the College are very fortunate: they have access to live lessons, supported by Google Classroom, where extensive resources are posted frequently. Should they find difficulty within their learning, they can email staff directly and arrange further support, through a Meet or simply by checking their understanding through questions.

There are, of course, those far less fortunate, who can’t engage to this extent. It was very worrying to read the findings of the National Foundation for Educational Research at the end of the summer, who stated that children in England were, on average, three months behind in their studies with boys and poor pupils worst hit.

So what can we do to help at the College?

In an effort to provide an outlet for students, parents and teachers in need, we have developed the EIC Hub - a freely available, extensive and user friendly resource which contains materials to support the study of all GCSE and A Level courses at the College. All of our staff, utilising their sizable collective expertise, have contributed to this and they can be used to structure learning of a syllabus or as a revision aid. Please do visit and explore the available content.

To my mind, it is incumbent on those who can help to do so and I hope that when the Hub is launched it fulfils a modicum of support in the challenging times we are going through.