The COVID-19 global pandemic and the necessary steps governments are taking to deal with it, is undoubtedly affecting every possible aspect of our lives. From the home to the workplace and everything in-between, measures are being taken to continue as best we can given the stringent restrictions.

It’s clear, one of the most significantly affected sectors is education. Closed for all pupils apart from those with parents identified as key workers, the vast majority of primary and secondary schoolchildren are having to continue their education at home. This means parents are having to educate their children, or rely on resources distributed online by schools to prevent children falling behind. We spoke to schools on how they’re getting the best outcomes from a tricky situation.

Head of psychology, Barnet, London:

“I already share my resources with my classes via Google Classroom and Google Drive and I’m now looking into using Google Hangout as a way of teaching them remotely too. As a school, we’ve been asked to ensure we upload all work for classes to Show My Homework - our online homework logging platform which parents can access and also allows the headteacher and SLT to see that we are uploading work regularly for students to complete. I would like to live stream or record lessons but am exploring options to find the best platform to use to do this on”


Teacher, philosophy and religious education, Bohunt Education Trust:

“We were fortunate enough to have an INSET day which we used completely to plan for five weeks of online learning. We took a lot of material from TES which is a brilliant resource but it does not differentiate very well so we have already started working on the next unit. We have a lot of WhatsApp groups, one for the department, one for faculty and so on. Members of the SLT are in the groups so they can identify problems and challenges, a lot of which has been access to the work: we aren’t able to mark accurately without physical work being handed in and students are not very good at organising their workloads. We share resources primarily through WhatsApp and email but there isn’t a child-friendly service for this, and that’s particularly problematic for those with little access to online systems.

“I have been making calls to parents of my tutor group to explain any processes and reassure them that I’m contactable and WhatsApp has been great for staff mental well-being: our head of school has even set up a weekly challenge for staff including a pub quiz and lip sync battle!”


School business manager, Wood End School, Harpenden

“Currently, all teachers are working from home and can access the school server remotely.
We are using the class page of the school website to post links to online software and other learning documents which varies across year groups and apps School Jotter and Schoolcomms, which we use to send messages to parents. We’re also using Twitter to broadcast video clips from teachers and have set up new email accounts for parents and pupils to support our new home learning structure.”


Science teacher, Ted Wragg Multi Academy Trust:

“We are using Google Classrooms, and made sure every student was trained on the platform and set up an account before the school closed, with each class having its own Google Classroom. We also use a website called Seneca, which contains entire courses from the exam boards, allowing us to set questions online.

“The great thing about this is that we can monitor how well students are doing on an individual question level, so we can easily spot gaps in students’ understanding to inform what needs to be covered again if lots of students don’t understand it. The software also keeps a log of the success rate of each type of question on an individual level, so if they detect a student is underachieving at a certain topic or even a style of question, the software will then target them with more of those questions

“Our main challenge at the moment is making sure we deliver the same level of education to everyone, including those without internet access, which is a huge challenge. We’re doing our best to get hard copies to those families but that requires a lot of cooperation from pupils and parents to prevent pupils missing out on a significant amount of their schooling.

“However, an advantage is that we’ve massively opened up channels of communication which weren’t open before. That means that not only will it be easier to reach out to pupils and parents in the future, it will really help us provide support to children who don’t attend school due to anxiety or issues at home.”

From ensuring homework completion to using sharing resources across digital platforms, it’s clear that technology plays a vital role in keeping education standards high whilst teaching and learning from home. From end users to manufacturers and software developers, now is the time to show the education sector the true value of technology.