In this article we consider three of the key findings that our contributors have identified to have emerged from operating a public school service in the pandemic.

  • Providing a public education in which all pupils are regularly seen, safe and supported.
  • Recognising the diverse nature of our pupil population and adapting our learning programmes accordingly.
  • Rapidly increasing staff and retaining quality is challenging.

Seen, safe and supported

Sir John Coles, CEO of United Learning, England and Mike Dubeau, Director General of the Western Quebec School Board, both reported that the pandemic with its requirement for home-schooling had highlighted the need for a public education service to ensure every child was regularly seen, were safe and supported. This was especially true for students who came from disadvantaged backgrounds. (See Seen, safe and supported – the future of education).

It was therefore concerning to read over the past month that OFSTED in England reported that they did not know how many unregulated schools existed in the country, nor did they have the resources to find out. They said that this situation was exacerbated by the lack of a register of the children of parents who had opted to home-school their children. As home-schooling has grown during the lockdowns, the numbers of children involved continue to increase.

Diversity of backgrounds

In our theory of action the effective learning programmes we design and deliver take into account the time, place and disposition of the learner. We do this to ensure that the knowledge or skills they are to learn connect with where they are now.  The pandemic, either directly or indirectly, has highlighted the diversity of the learners we are teaching. This has made many of us look again at whether we are truly accounting for the diverse nature of those we teach in the way we teach them.

Rapidly increasing staff and retaining quality is challenging

With so many staff absent after testing positive for the virus or being closely associated with those who have, there has been a considerable increase in the need to find teachers to cover their work. This has been made worse by the lack of a pool of well qualified staff and the random and dynamic nature of the demand. In order to counter this in England, the Department of Education has made a request for retired staff to return temporarily to the classroom. This week the department reported that 500 had done so, but this falls far short of the numbers required.

Even before the pandemic, there was a shortfall of qualified teachers in the Western Quebec School Board and we reported on the programme introduced to bridge that gap (See Western Quebec School Board, Case Study). This increased demand has not helped the situation there.

In most schools we work with, the issue has not been a lack of funds to employ staff. It is more that unqualified staff have highlighted the fact that teaching is a skilled profession and untrained staff more often than not create more problems than they solve. This, as Julie Fram-Greig pointed out, presents school leaders with a dilemma as to whether they use the non-qualified teacher and deal with the potential fallout or overload someone qualified. (See Global update – Wakefield Elementary School, Quebec)

The solution could be resolved in the longer term by providing the resources to have a large pool of trained staff available to a school, but this would require additional funding. As most countries are struggling to find the funds to deal with the issues they are addressing now as a result of the pandemic, it is unlikely that these additional funds will become available in the future. However, if the current situation becomes the norm they might well need to re-think.

I was invited earlier this week by Mats Rosenkvist, CEO of Successful Schools, Sweden, to take part in a webinar hosted by BRAVOLessons. This involved 25 participants, made up of heads of school for municipalities, development managers, head teachers and local school politicians.  The topic under discussion was how to improve an education system via effective knowledge management, especially around improving teaching and learning. For this I drew on lessons learned from the London Challenge. I was fortunate that all involved apart from myself was bi-lingual.

I hope that the start of the term has not been too disruptive for you, as I know that home-schooling has returned. There is, however, some room for guarded optimism amid signs that the impact of the latest variant is starting to decline in some of our communities.

Take care and stay safe

George

Professor Sir George Berwick, CBE