It’s difficult to overstate the impact of the coronavirus pandemic: 2 million pupils in the UK completed no school work during lockdown, while four in 10 pupils in England were not in regular contact with teachers, according to recent studies.
While those figures paint a grim picture of educational decline, another narrative is also emerging. Thousands of parents have risen to the challenge of home schooling, embracing technology to facilitate distance learning and amassing new digital skills. Might one legacy of the pandemic be a change in attitudes towards learning and the role of technology in education?
“Yes, everyone – parents, teaching staff and children – will come out of the pandemic with much better digital literacy skills than they had at the beginning,” says Charlotte Gater, head of curriculum at Explore Learning, which offers maths and English tuition to children aged four to 14 years old.
Pre-Covid-19, Explore Learning provided tuition to 37,000 members via 143 learning centres – all of which had to shut their doors due to the onset of lockdown. This prompted the business to fast-track the launch of a new digital platform within two weeks, offering online tuition to members. Children have weekly one-to-one sessions with a tutor and access to a personalised digital programme of learning. There are live daily maths and English lessons, as well as a members’ area with resources for children and parents.
The learning curve has been steep. Parents have needed help getting to grips with technology, and tutors have had to adapt quickly to teaching individuals online rather than small groups face-to-face. But the pivot has paid off. Explore at Home has 23,000 members and a backlog of almost 700 requests for trial sessions from people considering membership. Explore Learning also currently reserves 10% of its intake for children from low-income families, who are offered half-price memberships.
Ben Lopez, father to Ella (year 4), and Jack (reception), opted to pause his Explore Learning account at the beginning of the health crisis. “We signed up a few months earlier but I didn’t want any extra expense during lockdown, and with two children at home full-time, we thought fitting in any extra learning would be a challenge,” he says.
Once the government announced that Jack could return to school, Lopez decided to resume tutoring for his daughter via Explore Learning. “Within a few hours, we had a call back explaining the new process of tutoring online via Microsoft Teams, and that Ella would have access to the online platform and other learning material that she could use whenever she liked,” he says.
Lopez agreed that his daughter would use the platform for at least an hour a day while her brother was at school, and have an additional one-to-one session with a tutor online.
“During lockdown, interacting with other children and adults has been difficult, but this gives Ella an hour a week to really talk to someone else and explain her issues relating to maths and English,” says Lopez. “It has been very hard as parents to try and teach our children while working from home. Our school has been great but this has been the first one-to-one interaction Ella has had with a tutor in three months. In hindsight, we should probably have kept up with tutoring throughout lockdown.”
Bill Mills, founder and CEO, established Explore Learning almost 20 years ago after a stint working in the US inspired him “to do something worthwhile in education that was broadly accessible”.
He believes the pandemic has illuminated the importance of tailoring learning more closely to the individual child.
“Among the things driving take-up of our online offering is the fact that there’s such variation in what schools have been delivering,” he says. “Parents value that personalised face-to-face interaction, which many primary school children haven’t been getting during lockdown.”
The coronavirus will eventually fill history books, but Mills hopes it might also help reshape the national curriculum. “We have a model of education where children are organised into classes of 30 according to age and marched through a very prescribed curriculum, which works well for around 40% of children. But there are many others whose needs vary from the core of that cohort,” he says. “The danger is that those children develop a narrative of wondering what’s wrong with them because they can’t achieve what their peers can.”
To combat this, Explore Learning uses an adaptive platform called SuccessMaker, and is developing its own bespoke technology tool, called Compass. A child’s response to the software determines which elements of the curriculum they are presented with, allowing children to take their own pathway through the resources. It’s the antithesis of opening a textbook and asking a class to complete tasks on the same page, regardless of ability.
Mills hopes Compass could one day help schools close the attainment gap exposed by the pandemic, wherein some children have flourished during lockdown while others, particularly those without computers or internet access, have been seriously disadvantaged.
Another legacy of the pandemic for education is the fact that online learning has become a more active experience. “Parents who weren’t that tech-savvy or who didn’t think technology had a part to play in their child’s education have totally changed their perception of online learning as a result of seeing children so engaged,” says Gater.
“Prior to the pandemic, many of the things children did with technology were passive – they watched a video or completed a quiz, but they had no interaction with other learners or feedback from an adult, whereas now children are collaborating with one another using tools like Microsoft Teams, and teachers can give realtime feedback through digital platforms like SeeSaw.”
Perhaps most significantly, the pandemic has changed the level of involvement many parents have in their child’s education. Gone are the days of asking a child what they did at school and hearing “nothing” in reply.
“Many of our parents have commented that they’ve been able watch a tutoring session and see the impact of their child’s learning,” says Gater. “Parents have told us they’ve felt really supported during lockdown because we’ve been right there in their house helping their child throughout – albeit virtually.”
Try Explore for free
The process of getting to know your child starts from the very first time we speak with you at your free online trial session. This is an opportunity for us to discuss your child’s requirements in depth and for you to see what an Explore at Home session would look like for you, with no commitment.
Our award-winning maths and English tuition is delivered by experienced UK based tutors, tailored to your child and mapped to the school curriculum.
For more information and to book your free online lesson click here.
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