Teachers, pupils and families alike must be delighted to have reached the half term holiday week at a time when education has become so challenging to deliver and to access safely.  And this moment also marks the halfway point of an academic year which has required industrial quantities of imagination and re-envisioning.  The workload for teachers has continued to increase as they provide material for remote learning as well as lessons in school for pupils who need to remain in school.  I know from my role as governor in our own St Mary’s primary school that our teaching staff and community have been, quite simply, magnificent in rising to probably the biggest challenge in education that all school establishments have ever encountered.

And we should also applaud the efforts of pupils and students everywhere who have had their learning hugely disrupted.  It requires great self-discipline to sit down with a work pack or to approach remote learning tasks on a computer, especially when this is required day after day, for weeks at a stretch.   As a teacher, I remember how group learning sparks off interaction and creativity.  It enables pupils to produce their best ideas in response to what they see and hear from their fellow pupils, and the sum of learning is greater than the individual parts.  So when pupils are deprived of this cooperative interaction, it is harder for them to maximise their learning potential, and to be inspired by the contributions of their peers.  And for the teachers, speaking to the screen without the visual clues of real faces in front of them in a classroom, it is much harder to identify who has understood or who is struggling with the material.

 And of course, not everyone has access to laptops or tablets, particularly in larger families where there might only be one device suitable for distance learning.  Imagine trying to compose a piece of creative writing on a phone or simply looking up information about a particular topic.  I know if I want to Google where my nearest garden centre stockist is, I will always use our computer in preference to a phone because it is quicker and easier to navigate the screen.  This must be even more the case for pupils working on educational tasks.  Many locations still struggle with poor internet speeds, and if the broadband is poor, it may not support multiple users all trying to work online at the same time.  A slow download speed can be a huge barrier to making progress.

Parents too have borne an enormous additional load with the need for pupil home learning.  It’s not easy to do one’s job from home when it requires deep concentration and uninterrupted quiet.  I take my hat off to all those parents with children at home who have been juggling their own jobs with supervising their offspring completing school work, quite apart from keeping the peace when sibling rivalry breaks out.

This pandemic has required all sections of our community to dig deep and find resources within themselves which were unimaginable a year ago.  But there is so much for people to be proud of, both in their own achievements and in the ability of others to rise to exceptional challenges.  One day, we will be able to look back to this time and say with quiet pride: yes, we were part of the Covid generation and we managed to come through it by supporting each other.

Sarah Bourne, Chaplain for the Arts – 17^th February 2021                 sarahbourne@banburystmary.org.uk