Curriculum Report

Curriculum

Gerry Summerhayes

A major part of my role at St Edward’s College as the Director of Curriculum is to create the College timetable. This normally takes approximately 6 months’ work to prepare for the following year to allocate students to classes, allocate teachers to classes and allocate classes to rooms around the school. The timetable generally doesn’t change throughout the year, so it gives us the last six months of the year to prepare for the following year.

Last year in 2020, due to COVID, the timetable changed three times. At the time I thought that was difficult for not only myself but also for all staff and students through the disruptions. This year in 2021, because of the extended home-based learning and the everchanging COVID restrictions for schools, it resulted in nine variations of the timetable. The main reason for the changes was to accommodate home based learning. It allowed for both staff and students to have an extended break from their screens during online learning during the day. Once students began to slowly transition back to school the priority was to try and maintain social distancing. This meant further changes to the timetable, almost on a fortnightly basis. 2021 made 2020 feel like a breeze!

One thing that I have learnt from 2021 is that our staff and students are resilient beyond all imagination. Dealing with uncertainty and change week to week after being used to structure and routine was certainly challenging. However, we all made it through home-based learning, and it was finally fantastic to see everyone back at school as a whole College once again.

I would like to thank the staff and students for their support, cooperation, and patience with the changes throughout the year and I am now looking forward to finally starting the 2022 timetable for next year.