The pandemic has affected every school in a different way, with staff using a variety of means to adapt to the changing conditions.

On our recent visit to Quebec, we called in to Wakefield Elementary School, Wakefield. The school is under the control of the Western Quebec School Board and located in the countryside about 40 kilometres outside of Gatineau. The school has 320 pupils, with a socio-economic status of 3 – 4 out 10, with 1 being the most advantageous.

Julie Fram-Greig has been the principal since January 2014. One of her previous roles was deputy principal Philemon Wright High School, Gatineau, Quebec, where she was part of the successful transformational team.  Terry Kharyati was the principal and our team offered support.  (Those reading this who work in the English system should know that it is not unusual for Principals and Deputies to be assigned by the board to both secondary and elementary schools.)

The student body at Wakefield is made up of around 5 per cent French language mother tongue speakers, 50 per cent bilingual and the remainder have English as their native tongue. Unusually for Quebec, this is also reflected in the local community, which has a much larger proportion of English first language families than on average in the province of Quebec (7.7 per cent).

We spoke to Julie about her experiences of leading her school during the pandemic. Interestingly, during this period the school population had risen by 10 per cent. In part from the movement of city dwellers to a perceived more tranquil life in the country but also by a small but significant number of students who re-joined the school from home schooling (as we have reported before, the trend across the Board has been for the number of students home schooling to increase). She attributes this to one parent opting in, having a successful experience, and others following.

So far during the pandemic, the school has only been formally closed for twelve weeks. The remainder of the time it has stayed open to support vulnerable students.  The entire province was shut down from March 2020 to early May 2020 (about seven weeks) then again for five weeks in April 2021. When they returned to school in May 2020, only about 25 students returned, equating to about 5 per cent of the school population. The rest stayed at home and therefore missed four months of schooling, the final reporting period and probably the most impactful period of learning in the school year.

She was full of praise for the way the Provincial government had responded to the crisis providing clear instructions of what to do and not to do and the additional resources to carry out these directives.  However, when these resources were provided for additional staffing, they came with their own issues. The Board as we have reported has developed a highly effective way of selecting and inducting staff. They were providing a two-year induction programme, including coaching for new teachers ten years before the early years programme currently being introduced in England. With no time for this, the interview became the only way to ensure the process. As a result, the outcome was hit and miss and where they missed, Julie was left with the dilemma of deciding between allowing her pupils to work with the new member of staff and support them when they failed or overload one of her outstanding existing staff members, thus adding to the pressure they were already under

Julie has some interesting observations to make about her pupils.

  • She has noted a decline in the range of their performances. She observed similarities which were not there before.
  • With first year students having missed kindergarten, they need to learn how to behave as learners. They require far more physical reassurance than they did in the past.
  • Older pupils have also had issues with maturity. Some of this was brought about as a result of the bubbles they were assigned to work in. Initially, they were reassuring but as time passed, they became an issue for some.
  • There is now a huge learning gap for those pupils who require significant support, which the school is currently making every effort to close.
  • The school has completed a data analysis of the pupils’ performances in the different cohorts in the three core subjects of English, maths and French, and from this it has set targets for the percentage of pupils passing this year.  Overall, pupils in Cycle 2 (Grades 3 and 4) suffered the most academically, which they thought made sense because they missed parts of Grade 1-2 when they learnt basic numeracy and literacy skills.  In addition, French pass rates were much lower than usual, which could also be attributed to the lost learning and the fact that many of the parents might not have been able to help with this.

However, Julie said she is optimistic that these issues can be addressed. She added that in her experience, elementary school children are very resilient, and she fully expected them to catch up, given sufficient support.  On the plus side, they had found that their virtual parents’ evenings had been a great success.  When Julie checked with her teachers afterwards, they reported much better turnout for interviews, with many reporting full attendance and very few absences.

For her staff, Julie is concerned about those whose outstanding reputation in the past was defined by activities that were curtailed or had to be modified during the pandemic. Some of these staff she felt had adapted to the changes, but others had found it hard, and this had affected their self-esteem. The school was helping them to accept that with the change of focus and workload, some things needed to be put on hold. She had tried to role model this approach in her own work.

We are grateful to Julie for finding the time to share her experiences with us and hope that the restrictions placed on the education she provides for her students during the pandemic are reduced enough for her and her staff to close any gaps that have arisen in their learning.

Take care and stay safe

George

Professor Sir George Berwick, CBE