VIEW FROM THE VIRTUAL CLASSROOM


to-one sessions with teachers mean that pupils always have the support they need. We are also undertaking virtual school trips, with classes taking virtual tours of landmarks including the likes of the Globe Theatre. These remote capabilities have really helped us build our school community. For instance, teachers’ pets and new babies have joined some virtual lessons as surprise guests – and some of the babies are becoming school celebrities in their own right!


How much do you rely on parents to help? Some parents have been keen to get involved, both in supporting their own children’s education and in helping to coordinate efforts, with each class having their class rep. We’re well aware that often our pupils’ parents will be working during the day and so find it hard to juggle their jobs and helping with home schooling. As a result, we need to be sure that we’re helping our pupils be self-sufficient with their education – although sometimes this isn’t possible, such as with the very youngest pupils. This is partly behind the decision to use Teams, which has been easy to learn and use for teachers, pupils and parents alike. It’s also partly why we gave our senior students school-issued Microsoft Surface Pro devices, so that we could be sure they could access lessons and information without relying on whatever technology they have at home. Because we have everything in place to teach pupils remotely, we’ve also been able to extend this beyond term time. For instance, we were able to hold a virtual camp for pupils over Easter for families whose parents had to work over the holidays.


How challenging was it to get the technology in place? We’ve been fortunate in that our investment in digital technology was already well advanced. The greatest challenge was ensuring that teachers could adapt to the very different experience of hosting – and teaching – a virtual lesson. While the principles are the same, it requires quite different communication skills, and also meant that lesson design had to change in order to fit the new format. The time we had to prepare meant that teachers could test their lessons in class first to ensure they worked before they had to teach remotely for real. In terms of the technology itself, our IT partner


Insight has been a huge help. They have experience working with other schools who have been making the same journey as us, meaning they could give us the advice and help we needed. They’ve not only advised us on how best to use the technology, and helped train up both our teachers and our support staff. They also identified which products would help us meet our goals, and helped us test different devices to ensure we’d pick the ones that allowed our pupils and teachers to run all the software they needed. Equally importantly, Insight worked directly with Microsoft to ensure we got exactly what was required for our digital strategy to work.


What advice would you give to other schools looking at the same situation? Unless you have specialist knowledge, it can be really difficult to work out just what technology – from devices to software – is right for you. If you can, working with a partner such as Insight really


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helps avoid an expensive trial and error process. This isn’t only about choosing the right technology at the start, though. It’s also about helping to get the best deal. It’s unlikely a school will have the relationships needed to understand how to get the most value for money, even when procuring hundreds of devices. There’s also software licensing to consider, which needs specialised knowledge to work out the best licensing model to use and negotiate the best offer. Then there’s ongoing support. Anyone who’s


bought technology in any capacity, whether business or personal, knows that you’re likely to face hardware or software issues at some point. In that situation, you want someone who can deal with the problem – such as returning a damaged item under guarantee – as your own IT team will need to direct their full attention on providing IT support and an excellent service to staff and pupils. In our case, whenever we’ve had any kind of


issue, Insight just sort it out. Whatever is going on behind the scenes, we don’t have to worry about it.


Are you now doing everything you want to with technology? This isn’t the end of our digital transformation by a long way. While our priority at the moment is ensuring we deliver the best possible education to our pupils during the current situation, we are also learning lessons that will help make us a more effective school in the future. For instance,


we have shown that with the right support remote learning is quite possible, meaning we can better accommodate pupils less able to attend school every day. At the same time, we recognise that new


devices and software can help us improve pupils’ education in any number of ways. The fact that Insight gives us the opportunity to trial software and hardware before we need to make any purchasing decisions is a huge help; as it allows us to test our ideas and make sure they work in practice before we have to commit to a significant investment.


What has the response been from pupils and teachers? Our pupils have taken to the new way of learning very well – which is testament to the hard work the school staff put into preparing. Similarly, the response from parents who can have complete confidence that their children are still receiving a full education has been almost universally positive. We’ve had praise for what our staff have achieved in such a short period of time, and it’s also been welcome to receive praise from parents who work in industries where they understand how difficult such a project can be to achieve. In particular, we’ve helped take a real weight off parents’ minds. Those that have to work can do so safe in the knowledge that their children are engaged and learning. Indeed, word has spread enough that we have seen a spike in requests for new placements.


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