Remote Education Reflections

In February, during what we hoped would be the final lockdown, Headmaster Andrew Gordon-Brown interviewed his deputies, Gordon Opie (Senior Deputy Head Pastoral) and John Davies (Deputy Head Academic), to share their insights into what lessons we have learned since March 2020 when schools around the world were thrust into the virtual world.

Below cite some of their answers.

What have been some of the greatest challenges to virtual education for the School?

Mr Davies: The greater challenge for educators has been to do with thinking through different planning and teaching methods - it has involved experimentation and refinement. Much of strong teaching is tacit: excellent teachers can tell if a student has understood something through facial expression or body language. Many of these subtle non-verbal signals are lost online, and so teachers must work that much harder to assess whether their students understand the teaching.

Mr Opie: Pastorally the great challenge is trying to engender that feeling of belonging to a House or tutor group. Due to the creativity and imagination of both House staff and tutors, alongside the development of a tailor-made tutor programme to suit an online environment, we feel we have successfully recreated the feeling of the Kingswood community online. Mr Davies: Sometimes, people make a dangerous assumption that teenagers are 'digital natives', and therefore should take to remote learning quickly. However, learning online is quite different from socialising online - it requires discipline, selfmanagement, independence, maturity and tenacity. For some, however, online learning has been a boon; they have relished the challenge of managing their own learning and using online tools to collaborate with teachers and other students.

Mr Opie: The Senior Prefects have used their own initiative to help and support pupil well-being across the year groups, inspiring pupils to make the most of their time away from their screens, and provide them with a balance to their days. Discussion groups have flourished – e.g. Cultural Discussion Group/ Sustainable Development. We have also been able to run many of our extracurricular activities online and many of these are student led.

What is an aspect, if any, of the new teaching style you'd like to keep going forwards?

and enhance connection, giving students more autonomy and agency over their learning. I hope that one product of this difficult period is that educators will emerge with new confidence to rethink curriculum design and learner engagement; I believe the future use of these tools and skills could lead to a real revolution in how we educate young people in our society.

Mr Opie: The use of a virtual platform has made some meetings easier to organise during a busy school week. It has been possible for external speakers, governors etc. to join student meetings and we will certainly continue to leverage technology to allow this to happen. However, and it is an obvious pastoral observation, nothing replaces the face to face element of pastoral work. We will all appreciate those chats in the lunch queue and around the School, as well as the more formal tutor periods, when we are back in school together.

If you would like to watch the full interview, please scan the QR code.