Feedback from Parental Questionnaire regarding Remote Learning
First of all we would like to thank each and every one of you who took part in our remote learning parental questionnaire. We know time is precious at the moment; juggling home learning with full time work, so we really appreciate your honest feedback as to how you think the school have approached remote learning during this lockdown as well as your suggestions for improving it further.
On the whole, the questionnaire was overwhelmingly positive. However we would like to recognise that things some parents have liked about our remote learning offer, other parents haven’t - and vice versa. As a school, we unfortunately know that we are never going to please everybody – however providing us with some helpful comments and suggestions means that we can tweak our approach and iron out any of the frustrating glitches and issues that we hadn’t necessarily thought about.
Please find the results below:
We had 160 responses to this questionnaire (56 from Hardwick and 104 from Cambourne)
90% of parents thought that the work we set was ‘about right’
8% of parents thought it there was too much work set
2% of parents thought there needed to be more work set.
We’ll therefore aim to keep the work to the same level
65% of parents thought that their child was making progress at home.
We asked what aspects of home learning were going well? Some of the comments included:
Compared to previous home learning period it is much improved through Seesaw. |
Variety of resources are excellent. Teacher feedback, class sessions and assembly are all great. |
Child is old enough to work without constant supervision and is able to complete online tasks set |
Feedback / acknowledgement is available from teaching and support staff on work. Work is really easy to submit. Any wellbeing concerns are flagged by staff if visible e.g. in PSHE. Some sense of community created by Zoom assemblies which is much better than previous lockdown. I feel that the school can tell if my child is doing work - last time this wasn't followed up. |
Having to submit work and getting responses from teachers. The work set is good and varied. Lovely class zooms and assemblies. |
Developing independence. |
The activities set are good and interesting. It helps with Maths that there’s an answer sheet so parents can check the work if we aren’t too great at all Maths |
We have a good routine with getting work completed. |
Seesaw has made remote learning much easier |
Maths is great and having different abilities set has really helped my child |
Having a zoom each week with his class. Helps feel connected. The interaction with teacher/TA is amazing on every piece even it if it is a like! |
Having specific tasks to complete and submit. Good explanations, videos, PowerPoints, variety of online materials etc. The feedback is great, especially the voice recorded comments from the teacher, she really likes them. The assemblies and zoom class meetings have been really good. |
We like the structure and it's a million times better than the first lockdown. The SeeSaw platform is good (although there are areas where improvement is needed) and again is great compared to lockdown 1. The kids appreciate the feedback. They also really look forward to the class and assembly Zooms. |
There is a variety of topics and the tasks are manageable. The recordings and slides are very useful. Good flexibility from teachers for kids catching up with work late or over the weekend. Generally the amount and level of work provided is pretty spot on. |
The comments are great on the children’s work and they love getting them. As parents it’s lovely too. |
There’s diversity in curriculum content |
We also asked what could be improved. See below for your suggestions and our responses:
The main things we will be doing immediately are:
- Archiving work from the previous week, so it is not over-facing for children and parents at the start of the following week
- Sharing and signposting parents to the expected standard of work and mathematical calculations
- Timetable and resources available on a shared google drive for parents to access by the Sunday before the next week should they want to
- Where possible, there will be more teacher videos and / or voiceover of slide shows.
SUGGESTION
SCHOOL RESPONSE
Just started cursive writing and some videos of the method would be useful like there are for individual letters. Aware this is new to Reception so realise there probably hasn't been time to do this.
The reception team are planning on creating a demonstration video that guides parents through some of the digraphs in a step-by-step way, which can then be applied more widely.
It could be useful to have an idea of the types of activities the day before, or even at the end of the week before, if it involves anything in particular that is different to the usual things we have at home.
We understand how difficult and frustrating this can be. We therefore plan to have the timetable for the week, as well as any associated paper resources uploaded before the new week starts onto a google sharing platform.
Less screen time activities
We are starting to think about how screen time can be reduced particularly in some of the foundation subjects
Whilst the White Rose Maths videos/activities appear to be very thorough, they feel a little repetitive.
We follow White Rose planning cycle in school. Therefore, the continuation of learning between school and home are upheld. they also follow the fluency, reasoning and problem-solving approach that is so vital to the teaching of maths. They can be repetitive, but the flip side is that the children get to practise and consolidate the methods taught. There is also the option of the extension questions that allow them to apply the methods taught in different contexts.
Sound quality on teacher recording is sometimes poor and skipping.
Sorry for this. Some of our teachers have been suffering with poor internet connection both at school and at home.
Live lessons
As a school, we made the decision quite early on as to why we felt live lessons were not the home learning route we wanted to go down. These are the reasons why we made the decision against live lessons:
Most of our parents work and cannot have their children tune in on demand
In a large family, with several children, it puts extra pressure on families to be online at set times, especially if they only have a few devices
Pre-recorded videos and sessions, allow parents and children to re watch for clarity
There are GDPR and safeguarding issues regarding live lessons that parents may not be aware of
Clearing the outstanding tasks each week, it is a little stressful seeing so many incomplete tasks!
We plan to archive frequently, older activities to ensure that inboxes are not flooded with incomplete tasks!
We were unprepared for the quantity and quality of technology required to meet the requirements needed to access the work on seesaw, however I appreciate that is out of the school's control.
If anyone is struggling with this, please do get in contact with the school as we will happily loan you a device. This is especially the case if you have more than one child in your family and only one device too.
It would help if there were more guidance for parents how the schools teach/ where the teaching leads to. As an example, the kids learn the "bus stop" method for multiplication at the moment. What are the next steps? I struggle to guide the children into the right direction without knowing where to head.
Please check out the Maths and English pages as the progression of skills is laid out here. You will also find the Maths calculation policy here, which shows the different methods that are taught in which year group linked to the 4 operations.
The school leadership seem to have decided to do the bare minimum with regard to pupil contact at home and have no regard for parents' circumstances in arranging zoom calls.
As a school, we believe the amount of contact that children have had both with their teachers and members of their class is significantly more than last lockdown and therefore an improvement overall and addresses concerns that were raised in the previous lockdown.
Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing individual parents work commitments/ circumstances and therefore have to schedule zoom calls at times when it fits into the school day as well as having additional adult support in the classroom too. Most teachers have tried to keep their zoom slot to the same time every week, so that parents can plan their working week.
Assemblies for all years not appropriate content children at different ages, older children need different interaction than younger and hence a 1 stop shop seems pointless at times.
We thought long and hard over how to manage our assemblies. In school, we have both whole school assemblies and key stage assemblies and are adept at pitching different elements of the assemblies to the different age groups. We made the decision to carry them out via surname and as a whole school, as this then helps parents who are working at home only to have to sit through one assembly rather than several – if they have multiple children in different year groups.
Getting back to school asap
We want this too!!