A duty of care and a duty to teach: educational priorities in response to the Covid-19 lockdown
Lead Research Organisation:
University College London
Department Name: Learning and Leadership
Abstract
This research explores the challenges the Covid-19 crisis sets primary schools, using surveys and
telephone interviews to analyse how teachers weigh a duty of care (for their pupils' well-being and
welfare) and a duty to teach (given their responsibilities for curriculum delivery) in their
interactions with families during the lockdown. By tracking teachers' immediate responses and
longer term reflections, the research will explore the extent to which the crisis is challenging and
reshaping shared understandings of the purposes and values of primary education. This will be
considered in the light of the roles primary schools find themselves playing as supportive
community hubs during the crisis, particularly in communities experiencing high levels of social
disadvantage. By conducting the research within a short time frame, and comparing teachers'
actions and perceptions with the concerns expressed in public debate on the impacts of Covid-19
on education, alongside the most relevant research studies, the findings will be able to
i) inform decisions that will need to be made about how schools resume "business as
usual" post lockdown, including any implications for high stakes tests and inspection and
ii) set an agenda for public reflection on the value of the role schools play within their communities
through the ways in which they combine a duty of care with a duty to teach.
telephone interviews to analyse how teachers weigh a duty of care (for their pupils' well-being and
welfare) and a duty to teach (given their responsibilities for curriculum delivery) in their
interactions with families during the lockdown. By tracking teachers' immediate responses and
longer term reflections, the research will explore the extent to which the crisis is challenging and
reshaping shared understandings of the purposes and values of primary education. This will be
considered in the light of the roles primary schools find themselves playing as supportive
community hubs during the crisis, particularly in communities experiencing high levels of social
disadvantage. By conducting the research within a short time frame, and comparing teachers'
actions and perceptions with the concerns expressed in public debate on the impacts of Covid-19
on education, alongside the most relevant research studies, the findings will be able to
i) inform decisions that will need to be made about how schools resume "business as
usual" post lockdown, including any implications for high stakes tests and inspection and
ii) set an agenda for public reflection on the value of the role schools play within their communities
through the ways in which they combine a duty of care with a duty to teach.
Organisations
Publications
Bradbury A
(2022)
Crisis policy enactment: primary school leaders' responses to the Covid-19 pandemic in England
in Journal of Education Policy
Harmey S
(2021)
Learning disruption or learning loss: using evidence from unplanned closures to inform returning to school after COVID-19
in Educational Review
International Literacy Centre
(2020)
Responding to COVID-19, Briefing note 1: Primary Assessment
International Literacy Centre
(2020)
Responding to COVID-19, Briefing Note 2: Learning after lockdown.
International Literacy Centre
(2020)
Responding to COVID-19, Briefing Note 3: Resetting educational priorities in challenging times.
Moss G
(2022)
Researching the prospects for change that COVID disruption has brought to high stakes testing and accountability systems
in Education Policy Analysis Archives
| Description | The project, A Duty of Care and a Duty to Teach, tracked how primary school teachers responded to the dilemmas the COVID crisis set them during spring and autumn 2021, comparing their priorities in dealing with issues first hand to government guidance and public debate. Key findings: • Our survey respondents gave a high priority during lockdown to supporting the basic welfare of pupils and their families. All schools spent time ensuring pupils and families had access to food, as well as to other support services where needed. Schools working with our most disadvantaged communities, where levels of need were higher, felt these responsibilities most acutely. Judgements about how best to support learning at home took into account the home context, the level of resourcing available, including accessibility of digital resources, and the potential for tasks to engage both children and parents. • In their plans for re-opening teachers emphasised pupil health and wellbeing, making key priorities a return to settled routines and opportunities for pupils to socialise with their peers. Those working with the most disadvantaged communities were more concerned about the impacts of the lockdown on pupils' academic progress. Very few of our respondents supported the government's emphasis on "catch-up" and the need to meet statutory test targets regardless of the level of disruption. 77% agreed "If testing and inspection goes ahead as normal next year, schools serving the most disadvantaged communities will be unfairly penalised'. • Our systematic review of the literature on learning disruption showed teachers' perspectives were more closely aligned with the evidence on good recovery than government priorities. This literature shows local knowledge of how the pandemic has played out in very diverse contexts, with what consequences for pupils and their families, are the essential building blocks from which the most appropriate forms of support for pupil learning can be devised. • The unwillingness of government to trust schools to make appropriate choices in their local setting has made funding for recovery inefficient and potentially wasteful through misdirection of monies and the lack of discretion afforded schools to make the right decisions in their own circumstances. • Key recommendations from this project to remedy fragilities in the system that COVID has revealed: o Our current high stakes testing and accountability system is not fit for purpose - the pressures it creates are particularly inappropriate during an extended period of learning disruption. Statutory testing in primary schools should be suspended o The absence of strong connections across the education system needs redress through engaging all stakeholders in deliberation over how things run and valuing local knowledge o Schools working with our most deprived communities need more generous funding to sustain high-quality education and meet children's needs for food, welfare and wellbeing. • We made two submissions to the Education Select Committee inquiry into COVID, published survey findings and three briefing notes for schools and disseminated recommendations to trade unions, professional organisations, learned associations, MPs, and other interested parties in the education field, through seminars, social media, the professional press, and our webpages. |
| Exploitation Route | This project has informed discussion of how schools can best support their learners during the pandemic; and helped set an agenda for public reflection on what might need to change in education post-pandemic. Statutory tests in primary schools have been cancelled this year in line with our recommendation. The project reported at a time when those professionals most directly involved in responding to the crisis found their own insights into the impacts of COVID on their schools largely ignored. Instead, the DfE issued rapidly changing and often contradictory injunctions that seemed misplaced. This speaks to structural disconnects in the English education system that render it fragile and urgently need repair. Our project has shown how important schools are as community hubs - yet this role is largely overlooked. There is a considerable groundswell in the teaching profession in support of the changes this project identified as necessary next steps: revaluing local knowledge; addressing child poverty; and mitigating the negative effects of the current testing and accountability regime on our most disadvantaged schools. Research has a crucial role to play in bringing evidence to bear on these topics. It will be strengthened by working with other stakeholders actively seeking educational change. |
| Sectors | Education,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| URL | https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/departments-and-centres/centres/international-literacy-centre/duty-care-and-duty-teach-educational-priorities-response-covid-19-crisis |
| Description | This project was designed for rapid turnaround in the hope that the findings would have relevance and maximal impact at a time of considerable uncertainty over the best ways of managing education during a pandemic. Our findings have been taken up in the media (interviews with Times Radio and Reuters TV, press coverage of our briefing notes), in the professional press (Schoolsweek and the TES), and by a range of education organisations including teacher unions and professional associations who have alerted members to our research. Our study led directly to UNISON commissioning further work from the research team, exploring the role of teaching and classroom assistants during the pandemic. Our impact strategy has focused on i), getting accessible information out to school and system leaders, to influence practice, and ii), engaging with high-level stakeholders to influence the national debate. The preferred formats in which we chose to report our findings were first and foremost designed to reach practitioners struggling to find solutions adequate to the needs of their school communities. They have been well-received within the educational community, and led to further co-partnership working, translating our findings into a user-accessible format on responding to learning disruption, created with the teacher audience in mind. Our respondents recognised that pupils' needs encompassed basic welfare and well-being as well as opportunities to learn, with those schools operating in communities with high levels of disadvantage facing the greatest needs. The importance of attending to these different aspects of children's education has run through our communications and outputs. (See https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/departments-and-centres/centres/international-literacy-centre/duty-care-and-duty-teach-educational-priorities-response-covid-19-crisis). The level of disruption to schooling the pandemic has caused has been without precedence. Much of the official guidance and media reporting on the situation has not been well aligned with what teachers saw as the most pressing issues in need of solution. We used our briefing notes to offer guidance, based on insider perspectives on what were the most immediate concerns, and recommendations in the short term on how to meet the most acute problems facing schools while also highlighting some of the longer-term solutions that would make the education system as a whole more resilient and less fragile going forward. We used these different channels to help reset public debate on these issues. Each of our publications, designed for the general public and made available during the lifetime of the study, highlighted present needs and future challenges. These included a report based on our first survey and published by IOE (34 citations in google scholar; 5763 downloads to date); two reports submitted as written evidence to the Education Select Committee inquiry into The impact of COVID-19 on education and children's services; a submission to the Scottish public consultation on COVID; as well as podcasts and blog posts written for a variety of other outlets, both academic (BERA; EERA; IOE) and non academic (TeacherTapp; NEU). By reporting widely on main messages and key recommendations we got good traction for our findings. See for example https://neu.org.uk/press-releases/covid-19-impact-primary-schools#.X4RYFv_9dCQ.twitter "Teaching staff will recognise themselves in this research. It is a detailed and truthful account of primary teachers' experiences during the pandemic and of the conclusions they have drawn from it." We have used our publications to support other dissemination activities. We have been asked to talk to teacher trade union groups, to postgraduate teachers in training and their lecturers; acted as a witness in the Tortoise-sponsored COVID inquiry session "What went wrong with education?" (https://www.tortoisemedia.com/covid-inquiry/); and participated at invitation in a parliamentary roundtable on pupil hunger, an educational event organised by the Finnish Embassy on remote learning, and a Foundation for Education Development event on the future of primary education, alongside practitioners and major stakeholders in education. We also contributed to a panel discussion on statutory assessment, alongside all the major union leaders and cross-party MPs, with over 600 teachers and school leaders in attendance. We have held briefing meetings with trade union leaders and parliamentarians including the Shadow Education Secretary and other members of the shadow education team, and have drawn our findings to the attention of Ofsted and the Education Endowment Foundation. In combination, these contributions have helped change the debate over the best ways forward for education in response to the pandemic and helped create the climate in which the decision to suspend all statutory tests in English schools was taken. In a public debate often dominated by dire warnings about future damage, we have helped ensure that different ideas about what it is possible for teachers to do at this time are being considered much more calmly (See for instance https://nationaleducationunion.foleon.com/neu-remote-learning-portal/neu-remote-education-hub/pedagogy/overlay/pedagogy-rethinking-learning/ ). We continue to work to influence the debate in recognition that local communities will have been impacted in very different ways and that locally responsive solutions are best arrived at by respecting and harnessing the knowledge teachers have accrued from dealing with the effects of the pandemic at first hand. We are confident that this project has shown it is possible within the social sciences to research rapidly and bring evidence to bear on topics of particular concern, even in a fast changing environment where the most pressing problems shift as the pandemic itself changes course. The project led directly to a second award: Learning through Disruption. It also informed our rapid review of the evidence on covid harms and mitigations, conducted through IPPO/EPPI for the DfE. This is reported separately under the Learning through Disruption report. We have in the two years since the project finished completed and had published 3 academic articles drawing on both this project and the follow on study, Learning through Disruption |
| First Year Of Impact | 2020 |
| Sector | Education,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| Impact Types | Societal,Policy & public services |
| Description | Citation in Rapid Evidence Review produced to inform DfE on harms and their mitigations from COVID for primary and lower secondary pupils |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Citation in systematic reviews |
| Impact | Our review of the literature on learning disruption, with its emphasis on the value of local knowledge, helped explain the findings in our survey in May 2020. This had highlighted the gulf between teachers' experience of supporting children and families, and their sense of what it was both feasible and useful to do, and the government's far narrower focus on "catch-up" and the priority given to scramble to repair anticipated learning losses. When we were commissioned by DfE to review the evidence on harms to primary and lower secondary pupils, almost one year later, we were able to show that harms were more certain on children's nutrition and physical health, that impacts on children were mixed, with some benefitting from a period out of school, that impacts on mental health were likely to be as or more significant than impacts on attainment, and indeed that the most reliable evidence on attainment suggested that attainment would repair once schools reopened. On this basis, and taking into account the likely interaction between harms, we argued that "off the shelf" interventions suggested as mitigation strategies, including the National Tutoring Programme, were highly unlikely to be appropriate or effective, and that schools themselves should be given much greater control over how any recovery monies might be spent (Moss et al, 2021 See https://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=Yxnj8IdsTIU%3d&tabid=3842&portalid=0). Although not directly acknowledged at the time, government policy as reported on 12th March, 2022 (Richard Adams. Schools get extra £65m for catch-up tuition after DfE reacts to critics.) has finally changed, transferring money away from the commercial contractor, Randstad, and to schools themselves. We were one of the earliest research teams reporting in this way, and we think our combination of research evidence through interlinked projects that started with this first grant, in combination with other voices, have led to this outcome. |
| URL | https://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=Yxnj8IdsTIU%3d&tabid=3842&portalid=0 |
| Description | Finnish roundtable on remote education and lessons learnt from COVID |
| Geographic Reach | Europe |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| Impact | The Webinar on remote education, promoted by the Finnish embassy, highlighted the different orientation to use of technology on the part of the Finnish and English Governments during the pandemic. The Finnish Education Minister spoke of the need to integrate thinking about technology with pedagogic values and orientation and in the tasks set to highlight the interaction between learning and wellbeing. In our contribution we were able to highlight how far delivery has become a dominant and distorting metaphor for education in the English context. This got pick up and recognition from other panel members. |
| Description | Invited participation, parliamentary roundtable - Fuel to Learn |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| Impact | In our contribution to this parliamentary roundtable discussion we underlined the importance of teachers' knowledge of individual children's situation and how crucial this was in identifying where hunger and poverty were seriously impacting on children's learning. Our research has shown how important teachers are as sources of support for our poorest communities, through the care they offer children as well as the opportunities for learning that they provide. Learning and wellbeing go hand in hand. These insights were welcomed by other participants. |
| Description | Our systematic review of the literature on "learning disruption" influenced practice |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Impact | Our systematic review of the literature on learning disruption led to discussion with primary teachers on how the findings could be most effectively shared with practitioners. One of our collaborators, Megan Dixon, wrote an article in one of the most widely read professional journals for teachers, highlighting the relevance of our research for practitioners and the terms in which it might influence practice. The blog post written on the same subject for BERA in early 2021 by team member, Sinead Harmey, (Harmey, S. (2021). Learning Loss or Learning Disruption? [Digital scholarly resource]. Retrieved from https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog/learning-loss-or-learning-disruption.) was its fifth most widely read blog post in that year, as reported by BERA in December 2021. |
| URL | https://www.tes.com/magazine/article/during-covid-schools-must-focus-what-matters-most |
| Description | Survey findings influenced public debate on ways forward in education |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Citation in other policy documents |
| Impact | Our recommendation that primary statutory assessments should be suspended for the academic years 2020 and 2021 became part of a wider campaign within the teacher unions and other educational organisations concerned that the high levels of disruption to schooling would yield little useful information from tests for government, and apply quite needless pressure in schools, particularly those serving the most disadvantaged communities. Our briefing notes were cited directly in the speech at the NAHT conference which led to the adoption by the NAHT of the motion calling for the suspension of the tests. The government finally bowed to the collective public pressure, of which our research formed part, and agreed to suspend all testing during 20-21. By March 2022 our main report from the Duty of Care/Duty to Teach project had been downloaded 5763 times and has 32 citations in google scholar. Our briefing notes, designed to be accessible to practitioners, have been downloaded 557, 588 and 703 times respectively |
| URL | https://neu.org.uk/press-releases/covid-19-impact-primary-schools#.X4RYFv_9dCQ.twitter |
| Description | Early Career Impact Fellowship awarded to Sinead Harmey |
| Amount | £1,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University College London |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2022 |
| End | 12/2022 |
| Description | Learning through disruption: rebuilding primary education using local knowledge |
| Amount | £60,809 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | ES/W002086/1 |
| Organisation | Economic and Social Research Council |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 04/2021 |
| End | 08/2021 |
| Description | Rapid Evidence Review on the indirect short- and long-term impacts of Covid-19 on Primary and Lower Secondary pupils, and how these impacts could be mitigated |
| Amount | £10,800 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Department for Education |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 04/2021 |
| End | 06/2021 |
| Description | THE ROLE OF TEACHING ASSISTANTS DURING THE COVID CRISIS. |
| Amount | £17,500 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Unison |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2021 |
| End | 03/2021 |
| Description | Articles for the teacher professional press |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | We wrote successive articles for the teacher professional press, TES and Schoolsweek, which also have reach to parent and policy audiences These are Bradbury, A. (2020) Government and teachers' realities are increasingly worlds apart. Retrieved from https://schoolsweek.co.uk/government-and-teachers-realities-are-increasingly-worlds-apart/ Moss, G. (2020) Are free school meals about wellbeing...or attainment? Retrieved from https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/are-free-school-meals-about-wellbeingor-attainment Moss, G. (2020) 5 reasons to be cautious about estimates of lockdown learning loss Retrieved from https://schoolsweek.co.uk/5-reasons-to-be-cautious-about-estimates-of-lockdown-learning-loss/ Moss, G. (2020) A surprising convergence shows teachers' desire to rebuild better. Retrieved from https://schoolsweek.co.uk/a-surprising-convergence-shows-teachers-desire-to-rebuild-better/ |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://schoolsweek.co.uk/5-reasons-to-be-cautious-about-estimates-of-lockdown-learning-loss/ |
| Description | Blog post for the researcher community, policymakers and practitioners, reflecting on lessons from the pandemic |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Blog post on the IPPO website, reflecting on why and how prevailing models used to regulate the interactions between research, policy and practice in education were found wanting during the pandemic and a call for them to change. Policy mandates stressed that maintaining curriculum delivery, its timings and precise sequences, under these new conditions was the only way of avoiding irreparable harm to children's futures. This created a moral panic over the likely effects of "learning lost". But by focusing on learning lost as the difference between time spent in school under normal conditions and tasks undertaken at home as reported by parents, and extrapolating from there, the research community overestimated what had gone missing and underestimated the capacity of schools and parents to maintain and extend learning opportunities in new ways. Our research put communities' lived experience first and made a very different assessment of losses and gains during the pandemic. The insights from the research have fed into the ESRC Education Research Programme and its emphasis on partnership working. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://covidandsociety.com/education-learn-relationships-research-policy-practice-change-covid-19/ |
| Description | Blog posts for the researcher community commenting on the impacts of school closures on education, what our research has shown about schools' priorities and how they could be met during a recovery phase |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | We wrote several blogs aimed at the research community with links to policy and practice to draw attention to aspects of the crisis our findings suggested mattered most to primary schools and their communities, in an attempt to inspire others to explore these issues further. These can all be found on the project website: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/departments-and-centres/centres/international-literacy-centre/learning-through-disruption-rebuilding-primary-education-using-local-knowledge Briefing notes with these titles were published there: Learning through disruption 1: why school plans for recovery from COVID must be locally led Learning through disruption 2: schools serving high poverty communities need funding that fully reflects the work that they do Learning through disruption 3: schools engaging with families and communities during COVID Learning through disruption 4: building a more resilient education system post-COVID Learning through disruption 5: research evidence to support primary school inspection post-COVID The last article was originally written for Ofsted, to inform their resumption of inspection. On receipt of the briefing they invited us to a 2 hour meeting with their inspection team, including the lead inspector, and thanked us for the meeting afterwards. Although they do not publicly comment on impact of research on their work, we detected a stronger emphasis on listening to schools' own experiences of COVID and taking them into account, before making any judgements on what schools had done during the pandemic, using standardised tests scores and numbers of lessons delivered online as the main metrics. Our briefings emphasised the unintended consequences of conceptualising the impact of COVID in terms of "learning loss" calculated as the loss of time children had spent in class, leading on to the main emphasis in policy on children "catching up" with where they would have been if there had been no pandemic. We argued instead for schools paying attention to impacts in the round on health, nutrition, physical development and social development none of which were suitable for remedial individualised tuition, but rather would benefit from time spent back in class, with exposure to a rounded curriculum not a narrow emphasis on test scores. Research fellow, Sinead Harmey, also wrote Harmey, S. (2021). Learning Loss or Learning Disruption? [Digital scholarly resource]. Retrieved from https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog/learning-loss-or-learning-disruption. This work led to us being invited to contribute to a BERA hot topic session in 2021, organised by colleague Sandra Leaton-Grey. We made two presentations: Harmey, S. (2021). Learning from learning disruptions: Using evidence from past and present to inform the future. Presented at: British Education Research Association. Moss G and Bradbury, A. (2021) Catch up or bounce-back? Assessing the dimensions to the challenges facing education post-COVID. Presented at: British Education Research Association. Moss, G. (2021) Testing the Limits to Curriculum Reform: Why COVID Has Disrupted English Education. Presented at ECER It has also led to invitations to present at other events, including seminars and conferences in Britain and internationally, and to attend an OECD webinar on "International evidence on how education fared during the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns https://oecdedutoday.com/oecd-education-webinars/ |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| URL | https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog/learning-loss-or-learning-disruption |
| Description | Expert witness in the Tortoise-sponsored COVID inquiry session "What went wrong with education?" Day 2 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Tortoise Covid Inquiry was held by Tortoise media as a series of expert panels, convened on zoom over 3 days, in an attempt to investigate "the key moments and decisions in a nine-month effort to control the virus that by any reasonable standard or comparison has failed." PI Gemma Moss was called as an expert witness to contribute to the education session, ""What went wrong with education?" . Our contribution highlighted the absence of meaningful consultation with teachers over best ways forward for education during the pandemic; and stressed the value of teachers' local knowledge. Policy-making is weakened if the priorities teachers themselves recognise as mattering most in their local contexts are ignored or overlooked. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.tortoisemedia.com/covid-inquiry/ |
| Description | Interview with John Pienaar on the Times Radio Drive programme |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Interviewed on schools going back, the impact of COVID on learning loss, and how staff up and down the country will now be working to get pupils back into learning. These topics were of concern to teachers and parents in particular at the time, and we drew on our research to reassure, as well as highlight challenges |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.thetimes.co.uk/radio/schedule |
| Description | Invited panel discussant at a book launch |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Project researcher, Sinead Harmey, was asked to act as a panel member at an online event launching Tony Breslin's book on COVID, Bubble Schools and the Long Road From Lockdown. This was based on her lead authorship on publication, Learning Disruption or Learning Loss |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/covid-classrooms-to-covid-keeps-navigating-the-long-road-from-lockdow... |
| Description | Our briefing notes were used by the main speaker putting forward a motion calling for the government to cancel statutory assessments in 2021, passed unanimously at the NAHT conference. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The press release, highlighting our research findings and in particular our recommendation that Statutory tests (SATs) and inspection in the primary sector be cancelled for 20-21, was published at a time when there was considerable discussion on the terms under which schools might resume functioning in 20-21. Pick up for our briefing notes fed directly into the campaign against SATs which trade unions and professional organisations were conducting and was part of the ultimately successful move to overturn the government's plans. The use of our materials in the debate on the motion to suspend SATs at the NAHT conference played its part in this wider campaign. We gave the mover of the NAHT motion, Michele Sheehy, permission to quote from our briefing notes ahead of a press embargo, in response to an enquiry. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.tes.com/news/heads-vote-scrap-nonsensical-2021-sats |
| Description | Panel speaker on Zoom call rally organised by More Than a Score |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The research team contributed to a panel discussion alongside all the major union leaders and cross-party MPs, with over 600 teachers and school leaders, convened by More Than A Score, a campaign group supporting an end to testing. The rally was designed to build a general consensus across different groups and individuals for the suspension of testing. We were able to argue from our research that testing would disadvantage the most vulnerable pupils and was an inappropriate response to the pandemic. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx6E3SdAmhc |
| Description | Presentation and discussion of our main research finding at the Lambeth Governors' Forum event - November 10th 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | A london-based LA Governors invited us to present our research findings to them. Their invitation asked us to "come and talk to our governors next term about what we have learned from the covid lockdown, in terms of teaching and learning approaches. We hear that teachers are now doing some things better as a result of recent experiences, and it would be really interesting for us to hear about this." We spent over an hour with them presenting for 20 mins followed by a Q&A session. They commented in a post event email: "We'd be very interested in governors' involvement in further research in education. In particular, I was much struck by the need to get good quality research results into policy formation. I think this is an area where governors feel very helpless and frustrated". |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Presentation and discussion of our main research finding at the Lambeth Governors' Forum event - November 10th 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | A london-based LA Governors invited us to present our research findings to them. Their invitation asked us to "come and talk to our governors next term about what we have learned from the covid lockdown, in terms of teaching and learning approaches. We hear that teachers are now doing some things better as a result of recent experiences, and it would be really interesting for us to hear about this." We spent over an hour with them presenting for 20 mins followed by a Q&A session. They commented in a post event email: "We'd be very interested in governors' involvement in further research in education. In particular, I was much struck by the need to get good quality research results into policy formation. I think this is an area where governors feel very helpless and frustrated". |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Press coverage for our project findings |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Our press release at the final stage of the project was picked up by the press association and led to both national and regional coverage, including our recommendations that Statutory tests and inspections should be halted in 20-21. Articles appeared in the Scottish press, giving coverage to some of our main conclusions in a differently managed educational context, suggesting their wider relevance beyond England. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.centralfifetimes.com/news/national-news/18781368.sats-exams-inspections-schools-should-a... |