Since the start of lockdown, schools have worked tirelessly to provide education for their students – and many have used EDClass as online provision.
EDClass has been used by many schools so that education can continue for all pupils even when establishments are closed.
Schools up and down the UK are using our provision. Read this blog post to hear the thoughts of two: the Sheffield Inclusion Centre in South Yorkshire and Shenley Brooke End School in Milton Keynes.
What is EDClass?
EDClass is an online alternative provision which means students can continue education away from a mainstream classroom.
Our platform supports needs of all students – with access to 11,000 lessons, live teaching and a tailored learning pathway.
With a number of facilities built into our system we support a wide range of student’s needs.
Sheffield Inclusion Centre
The Sheffield Inclusion Centre is one of the largest Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) in the UK. It has both primary and secondary departments who have been permanently excluded from mainstream schools.
The centre has been open during the pandemic for children with a social worker, with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) and those who may have otherwise found coronavirus restrictions challenging.
Some students were unable to attend so further measures were introduced.
Headteacher Ms Rhodes said:
We have virtual education for a very small minority of our children and that was in place beforehand, this is supported with home visits and one to one tuition at home.
That’s expanded, we’ve got online learning which is following the curriculum without any work with a teacher and then we have EDClass. This allows our young people to interact in live lessons with a teacher.
When Covid-19 hit, the key thing for me was that I didn’t want any child to fall through the net.
I wanted to make sure that at least once a week we’d seen a child or spoken to a child and that we’d definitely spoken to the family. In addition, every child will get a visit fortnightly, we’ve got capacity for about 130 students but actually have around 250 on our roll.
Read the Sheffield Star article here.
Shenley Brook End School
Shenley Brook End School is secondary school and sixth form college based in Milton Keynes. They used EDClass before the lockdown, but it has since become an invaluable asset to all students.
We have been using EDClass for coming up to three years. We invested in this to support students that are based in our Inclusion Centre and to support students who might be working off site. We found that students needed something they had a little bit of control over but also structured. That mixture of independent study, allocated learning and the ability to use seats, meant EDClass fitted the criteria.
Prior to lockdown, this was used as an intervention for students based in our Inclusion Centre, Isolation and those educated off site. This would have been students that struggle in the classroom environment that need to be able to take a little more time in their learning and can get instant feedback on their work.
Since the lockdown, we are seeing it for multiple uses. Students in the lower year groups have used this to plug gaps in knowledge, with many telling us they have been using the independent study section. Our examined year groups are making use of the exam board specific lessons to ready them for exams and this has meant our English team in particular have been allocating specific pathways to students.
It has been good for parents as this has meant they have not had to sort through books and worksheets, all they have to do is get the student set on the learning button and they are good to go.
When we have used live lessons, being able to call them at a moments notice is great. If we have a student that has been removed from a lesson, being able to get them into something structured with online support in a matter of minutes has been really helpful.
During the lockdown we have been sharing headline data with year leaders and progress leaders and then celebrating those with great performance in our learning nestler to parents. We have been running a competition amongst the year groups, with those who appear in the Top 50 receiving recognition, and the year group with the most students in the Top 50 also getting recognition. We even have a little league table running from over the lockdown period.
This has also helped us find out who isn’t engaging and has meant our pastoral tea can come in and support those who aren’t featuring in our data.
To view this testimonial and more click here.
