Latest News
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Building a coherent picture of learning loss
Wed 07 Jul 2021Children learning to adapt with lots of other children learning from home, being isolated from one another without the opportunity to talk and challenge each other, where they live and their parents’ circumstances: all this has limited what our children have been able to do this year.
This has also made us all think how much the school system contributes to the lives of the children and their families. However, colleagues across our schools have missed out on so much too. We have felt so disconnected from some children at times when they have not been physically in school, but we have endeavoured to find ways to support all children in different ways, and there is no doubt many have thrived either through smaller group working or through the opportunity for high-quality remote learning.
Our staff have been amazing. Some were anxious to begin with because none of us knew what hand we were going to be dealt. Staff now have greater confidence being in school and they are more confident to work with the children. We always make sure we talk with staff, ask them questions, and do not take things for granted. Supporting staff who have been on a massive rollercoaster – trying to teach in classrooms, trying to teach remotely – they have been immense.
Encouraging colleagues to work in teams has been absolutely vital. We have created pillars of support, with people who can manage external and internal provision, but also with each other and making sure they have others to talk to. Instead of a high-level focus on CPD, I have tried to facilitate a mindset of ‘let’s share experiences, what is and isn’t working, how can we help and what do we need to do to enable everybody to cope with this’. Open dialogue, for me, is key, but of course it is challenging with constantly changing government guidance.
What the pandemic has highlighted is the opportunity, with appropriate government funding, to have a social/emotional mentor on every school site – somebody who perhaps has that ability to link with the community and parents as well (and a good example of this is Angie Waterson at Trumpington Park Primary School) – but I would advocate that training and development is needed to go alongside that.
And in the discussion of learning loss and catch-up programmes this is a reminder that children and staff are at the centre of this. Whilst there are people we might have labelled as disadvantaged pre-pandemic because of data, we now have families that are disadvantaged who were not before because of job losses and health issues. We have to acknowledge that and regroup as we look ahead to the future.
Lesley Birch is CEO/Executive Principal of Cambridge Primary Education Trust (CPET)
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Resilience: how teamwork has helped us through this Covid-impacted year
Wed 07 Jul 2021As a relatively small Trust, there is no doubt that the culture we have created across our five primary schools has meant we have been in a really good position to respond to the challenges we have faced over these past 16 months.
You can talk about structures and systems, but you also have to trust, and at CPET we are very big on teamwork. The five headteachers and I work very closely, the core Trust team has supported us, and we have team leaders and subject leaders across the schools working together. So, I think we have been able to utilise those systems that we already had in place to enable us to be more resilient in this period.
Being able to respond to the crisis – and learning lessons as we go – has been a huge part of building resilience. But we have also worked collaboratively with other MATs and within the Cambridge Teaching School Network, for instance, as well as professional and technology partners with whom we have been able to develop together and learn from each other. We have made sure that we share what we are doing. As our expertise has grown, this has given colleagues across the Trust opportunities to show what they can do and unearthed some hidden talents we had not tapped into before.
As we had that structure and capacity to support, this assisted with aspects such as risk assessments, which would usually take somebody hours and hours to do, whereas if you work as a group of schools you can develop this together, populate it, and ultimately make it bespoke for each school so this is a lot quicker. Trustees have been very involved too, and so the confidence that came with their support, questions and challenge to all the Headteachers empowered them and senior leaders as well.
Relationships are so important to resilience. We did not want people to feel that we did not trust them and gave them the support and confidence to go and work with the children, families and communities, who actually at first were very anxious. This has not gone away completely, of course, and I know we still have a lot of work to do. But it is the way you work that is important, both through our ‘hero’ people and through the culture we have created, that supports sustainable resilience for the future.
Lesley Birch is CEO/Executive Principal of Cambridge Primary Education Trust (CPET)