There was an audible sigh of relief from beleaguered parents and carers across the country as the government confirmed that schools will start reopening to all children from March 8th.
At the entrust IT Group, we celebrate the hard work that has been needed to ensure that education has been able to continue at a time of extreme adversity. Our schools, teachers and support staff deserve a huge thank you from everyone who has been involved with home schooling over the past few months.
As makeshift teachers, we have had to juggle our own commitments and stresses since the January lockdown. We have had to dust of our own knowledge of maths, English, science and the numerous topic subjects presented to us, but without the amazing job that our nations teachers have done and the massive technological leap many schools have taken, home schooling would not have been possible.
This home ed experience has been very different to that which we first experienced last Spring. When faced with continued disruption to an already fractured school year, the message of ‘just do what you can’ was notably replaced with the government’s 4 hours a day guideline, which schools have been expected to implement, set and mark with almost immediate effect.
Working online, teachers have been assigning work, assessing and commenting on each child’s efforts throughout the day and often into the evenings, doubtless missing valuable time with their own families, whilst also doing all they can to bolster children’s mental health and keep them engaged and responsive to online learning.
We appreciate the preparation time and quick mastery of technologies that may have been foreign just a few months ago. We have seen first-hand with our own customers and indeed through our staff’s personal experiences, the speed at which these collaborative technologies have been adopted in order to provide daily tutorials and live lessons.
Parents and carers have shouldered the burden of home schooling and teachers and schools have provided the structure and support to enable e-learning to take place as smoothly as possible.
Regardless of the route that your school may have taken with the choice of technology, and the inevitable teething issues that these unfamiliar teaching practices may have presented, we have seen a dedication that should be applauded.
There is no doubt that the last few months have brought about a steep technological learning curve for parents, students and teachers. At the entrust IT Group, we are delighted to be a part of this progress and applaud the efforts of all involved. With children returning to school, now is the time to reap the rewards of our endeavours. This challenging time has forced us to embrace technological advancements and find innovative solutions to teaching and learning which may well have not been adopted nationally for years. Now, these new skills and assets can be built upon and weaved into standard educational practices, creating an exciting, flexible and interactive approach to education that children, parents and teachers can benefit from for decades to come.
