Minutes:
Things have eased since last term with staff and pupil absences being less of an issue but we know that Covid is on the rise again nationally and some schools have reported a slight increase in absences.
Schools are operating more normally but some practices may have changed permanently since the pandemic. Some schools for example are keeping parent/teacher meetings online as these worked well from both sides. Some schools have kept staggered break-times and start-times and increased ventilation.
Most if not all covid restrictions have been lifted. Schools have gone back to having extra-curricular activities, trips & visits, whole school assemblies etc.
Schools seem busier than ever working hard to support children to recover from the effects of the pandemic in terms of their wellbeing, social skills and academic achievement, with the amount of face to face classroom time missed being now more fully realised. And of course, there has been an effect on the children’s families over those pandemic years and now the cost of living crisis and other family pressures: these are all having an impact on children in schools.
There have been various reports recently looking at the impact of the pandemic on children in Schools. Some of the most significant areas of impact are young children's communication and language skills, and children's personal social and emotional development. Some Head Teachers have said that children are noticeably less mature than they would normally be. Children are showing increased levels of anxiety and less confidence and resilience. Of course children have gaps in their knowledge and skills, although there's a lot of progress being made in closing those gaps and, in some cases, children have got back to where schools would have expected them to be.
Schools are providing a lot of extra support at the moment to help children to catch up, and supporting their wellbeing. In some cases they are adapting the curriculum for all children in order to fill the gaps in their learning. There is Government support being provided to schools in the way of extra funding for example to support children via a national tutoring programme, although this isn't always easy to access. The tutoring program has had a lot complaints about the excessive amounts of bureaucracy around it, the lack of tutors being available and the quality of the tutors not necessarily always being good. So, many schools have decided to use their own staff for tutoring which can work out a lot better but of course that is additional work and effort for the school staff.
This summer’s statutory assessment is happening which means primary school testing is happening for the first time since the pandemic. ‘A’ Levels and GCSE's are also happening currently in secondary schools and school staff have been working really hard to prepare children for those tests and exams.
A completely different thing that schools are having to deal with at the moment is new arrivals from other countries. Here in the South East of England, Wokingham and Reading are the two most popular boroughs for Hong Kong families to settle in so, for the last 18 months/2 years we've had a lot of families coming to the Borough from Hong Kong and that is continuing. In addition, more recently we have families from Ukraine coming to the Borough. The latest data tells us that over 100 households in Wokingham have volunteered to host Ukrainian families and so far 40 Ukrainian children have been placed in Wokingham schools but we're expecting a lot more in the coming months.
All of this means that there is quite a lot of pressure on school places in the Borough particularly in some year groups and some Head Teachers are admitting children over their admission number in order to offer those children a school place. Schools are working together to come up with solutions for how can they find school places for all these extra children and of course when schools do admit these children they have got to support their language needs and in many cases their wellbeing needs, especially if they've come from Ukraine.
In terms of LA officers working with schools we're finding in the school improvement team that we are getting quite a lot of teachers sending apologies for network meetings and training because there is so much going on at the moment meaning teachers simply cannot attend even though they want to get to everything. There is an awful lot of tiredness among staff from dealing with the impact of the pandemic.
Schools are now welcoming visitors. As a school improvement team we are now visiting schools in person where we need to but we are still meeting with teachers online where that works well, for example, our training and network meetings. Going forward, what some teachers seem to be saying to us is please carry on doing things online. Other teachers are saying please can we meet face to face. Some are saying we'd like a mixture so it is really hard to know in practice what to do but it will probably be a mixture. Therefore, in conversation with Angela about the SACRE development plan going forward, we are thinking we will offer schools a mixture of online and in person sessions. Our training and network meetings will probably continue to be online with just a few face to face. And maybe, as we have agreed for our SACRE meetings, we will have face to face sessions in the summer months and online for the rest of the year.