Page 8 - Androvian2021

6 | LOCKDOWN
LOCKDOWN SHOWDOWN
We returned to school in September 2020 looking forward to ‘the year when things would be restored to normal’. The children were in school, albeit in year group bubbles, and face to face teaching became standard once again. Children and staff were glad to see each other, there was a sense of business as usual and term passed with things going, largely, to plan.
On Monday 4 January, fresh from the Christmas break, staff came in to school for their pre-spring term meetings. But as we headed home at the end of the day, rumours had begun to circulate that schools would not be re-opening for the foreseeable future, this was confirmed by the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, at 8pm that evening.
A follow up staff meeting was hastily assembled and as the nation entered its second lockdown, we began our second period of teaching on Teams.This time, however, children and staff felt like experts! Pupils who had just joined the school were guided through our online systems and within 24 hours pupils throughout the school were benefiting from a timetable with superb, creative teaching which was as close to normal as possible, but at home.
In the time that we had been away from teaching online, several changes had been made to theTeams platform. A new attendance report usefully highlighted children who were not accessing lessons; and breakout rooms meant group work, which had been very difficult in the first lockdown, was now easy to set up and manage. Children could work in groups of two, three or four with teachers dropping in on them to see how they were getting on.
“Just a short note to sincerely thank St Andrews Prep for the warm welcome [our son] has received from the entire school. I cannot commend everybody enough who has been involved in making what could have been a traumatic experience into a thoroughly enjoyable start to a new journey in his life.”
Year 7 Parent