When restrictions were lifted after the first national lockdown, as soon as I could, I crammed a full day visiting as many schools and colleges as I could to see how our local schools were coping with the effects of the pandemic. I listened to the leadership teams on what their experiences was of teaching during lockdown and how they were working with teaching in the class as well as supporting home learning and how schools have been coping brilliantly.
I visited John Whitgift Academy, Havelock Aacademy, Cambridge Park Academy, Willows Primary School and the Grimsby Institute. With the Institute, I was keen to see how their hairdressing courses were being adapted to be safer for teachers and staff, which involved more spacing and better hygiene facilities. Cambridge Park has recently received funding to expand their site because they have been struggling with the space available to them. During this time, the pleasant weather has enabled external teaching and outside lessons, but they were really pleased with this funding boost and showed me their plans for expansion.
It’s really important to support our local schools and colleges in these difficult times. Not everyone may realise that despites most children being home schooled throughout lockdown, the schools themselves have remained open to children of key workers. My job as an MP is to know of their experiences so that I can feed that back to central government so that we can continue to support our schools and colleges in the best ways possible.
These schools and colleges have been coping really well with lockdown conditions. The biggest issues were the speed with which the lockdowns were decided and getting the guidance implemented in schools. Every school and college has implemented the guidance in their own ways to suit them best, so that was a positive thing to see. All the students that I saw were happy and learning.
Colleges have been very quick to be able to support online learning because that’s something that they do as a matter of course in their teaching anyway. Schools have been comparatively slower to adjust, especially primary schools, because it’s not a regular feature of their teaching practice. A lot of the children in primary schools come from families where perhaps they don’t have access to devices or broadband to enable them to engage with online learning, but the schools have been organised in going out and making contact with all of their students. Our local schools and colleges have been working incredibly hard to ensure that every child is learning.
