The information in this section is intended to provide clarity and transparency to pupils and parents or carers about what to expect from remote education if local restrictions require entire year groups (or bubbles) to remain at home.

What will we deliver?

In a mandatory remote education provision situation, we are committed to aligning remote work to our standard curriculum provision as closely as we do in school. This is to say, we will teach the same curriculum remotely as we do in school wherever possible and appropriate. We may need to make some adaptations in some subjects. Examples include Design Technology, Art, Music, and Computer Science, where our students may not have access to the specialist equipment or facilities as they do when on the school premises.

Remote education

We expect that remote education (including remote teaching and independent work) will closely align with the school day for each year group. We are committed to delivering outstanding learning in each of our five periods in each teaching day, and that these teaching periods take place the same time as they would in school, observing the standard break and lunch times for each year group.

The vast majority of lessons will be delivered live through our Google Classroom VLE system. Materials and independent work can also be accessed through this system in each subject.

Accessing remote education

All materials and teaching for remote education will take place through our Google Classroom VLE system. Additional online resources may be required for particular subjects, however, these will always be accessed via the Google Classroom VLE system.

We recognise that some pupils may not have suitable online access or equipment at home. As a school, we have undertaken significant work during the autumn term of 2020-21 to identify all students with difficulties in this regard, and have pre-emptively made available 4G wireless connectivity and over 100 laptops on a loan basis. We are confident all our students have satisfactory access to remote education should it be required. Parents should make contact with the year group team for their child if they believe this is not the case.

Remote teaching

We use a combination of the following approaches to teach our students remotely:

  • Live teaching (online lessons). During any remote education provision, our teachers will mostly be on the school site and will attempt to deliver lessons in a normal manner where possible.
  • Recorded teaching. This can often be recordings made by our teachers, however, we will also use additional resources where this is beneficial (i.e. Oak National Academy).
  • Textbooks and reading books students have at home as part of their regular way of working.
  • Commercially available websites which support the teaching of specific subjects. This is primarily the Hegarty Learning platform for mathematics.

Engagement and feedback

We expect students to be engaged fully with their remote education during their normal school timetabled hours. We will track and monitor attendance in the usual way and the school will make contact when attendance does not meet our high standards.

Parents are able to support us by setting routines at home to support their child’s education.

During live lessons, we will use standard classroom assessment for learning approaches where we can. All our students have been provided with a mini whiteboard which they have at home which we will look to utilise significantly during live lessons. Lesson work will typically be completed electronically and teachers will ask students to submit this via the Google Classroom VLE platform, for regular whole class assessment to take place in our usual manner.

Support for SEND

We recognise that some students, for example, some students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), may not be able to access remote education without support from adults at home. We acknowledge the difficulties this may place on families and we will work with parents and carers to support them in the following ways:

  1. adapted work for those in Aspirational groups;
  2. personalised Google classrooms which are monitored by a dedicated member of the SEND team;
  3. bi-weekly communication from a dedicated member of the SEND team for those in receipt of an EHCP;
  4. weekly communication from a dedicated member of the SEND team for those in receipt of school support;
  5. a dedicated email address for parents with children who have SEND to use as a direct form of communication throughout remote learning; 
  6. active online support during live lessons for our most vulnerable SEND students;
  7. dedicated return-to-school meetings for parents with SEND children upon parental request.

Partial Closure arrangements

On-site provision is in place in line with the DfE guidance for vulnerable students and children of critical workers.

When the school returns, if students still need to self-isolate…

Where individual students need to self-isolate but the majority of their peer group remains in school, we will once again provide a personalised Google classroom for each child which exists for the duration of their self-isolation. Subject teachers will provide work for each timetable lesson.