In the wake of the crisis At the beginning of lockdown, it was hard to imagine coming out the other side and how on earth we’d return to some form of normality. For the education sector, the impact will be far-reaching:
Impact of coronavirus
Our response to coronavirus In March it became clear that coronavirus would have a significant impact on Education Support. The main areas of impact can be summarised as follows:
• An increase in demand from
beneficiaries for our grants and helpline services.
• Due to social distancing
requirements, a reduction in our ability to provide face-to-face workplace support to schools and education staff.
S chools are dealing with wholesale changes in how they’ve had to operate during lockdown and face huge uncertainties about the future;
• A reduction in our ability to
T here are grave concerns about large increases in the attainment gap for disadvantaged pupils;
• The requirement to transition our
huge number of temporary staff A fell between the cracks of the furlough scheme; ome universities will have too S many students this coming year, and some will have too few. There are about 13 universities that are at risk of going bust this year; T he incidence of mental ill-health and post-traumatic stress is widely expected to rise in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.
meet fundraising and commercial income targets. own governance and operations to a remote working model.
We moved swiftly to mitigate the impact and adapt so we could manage the situation:
We increased capacity in our grants team. We cancelled all face-to-face services and began work on producing digital content and reshaping services for remote delivery.
We recruited to a digital fundraising role to support income generation activities.
We moved staff to homeworking and set
up appropriate tools for them to continue to work effectively.
We provided a flexible approach for staff so those with home-schooling or caring commitments were supported.
The Board, operating remotely, signed off a revised 2020-21 budget, reflecting the environmental uncertainty. 4
