Extracts from Westminster Hall debate on School Attendance: Covid-19 - Nov 2
Tuesday, 3 November 2020 08:17
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con):...I also had concerns about the online
learning offer. Before the debate, I talked to a headteacher of a
school in my constituency in a deprived part of town with probably
the highest proportion of students for whom English is an
additional language. Their online data indicates that only 22% of
children from disadvantaged backgrounds with a principal language
other than English received good-quality online learning during the
period when schools were closed. A lot of...Request free trial
(Ipswich) (Con):...I also had concerns about the
online learning offer. Before the debate, I talked
to a headteacher of a school in my constituency in a deprived part
of town with probably the highest proportion of students for whom
English is an additional language. Their online data indicates that
only 22% of children from disadvantaged backgrounds with a
principal language other than English received good-quality
online learning during the period when schools
were closed. A lot of children at the school come from the Roma
community, and for them it was only 10%. Again, we must look at why
that was.
(Ilford
North) (Lab):...In fact, it was quite the opposite. Many staff had
to work doubly hard to ensure that their pupils could continue to
gain access to learning in unusual circumstances, through
remote learning and with all the challenges that
we know exist. I will refer to those challenges, but they have
already been outstandingly put, not just this afternoon, but in an
Adjournment debate before the recess by my hon. Friend the Member
for Mitcham and Morden ()...
: If there are future closures or if children have to
self-isolate, should Ofsted have a role when it inspects schools to
look at the job that the school has done to make sure that it
facilitates first-class online learning if a
significant number of kids in that school have to self-isolate?
: I am
grateful for that intervention.There is a role for Ofsted to
play in looking at remote learning in the home, not
least to disseminate best practice among schools. Let us just be
clear for a moment—we are asking schools across the country to do
something that they have not previously been asked to do. Even the
very best teachers will have to adapt quite significantly to
teaching remotely. It requires a completely different skillset, and
we do an enormous disservice to people whose professional careers
are spent in distance learning by pretending that teaching in a
classroom full of pupils, where it is possible to look right into
the whites of their eyes and ensure they have access to the right
books and the kit that they need for their learning, is not a very
different challenge from teaching someone via an internet
connection with video streaming...
...Analysis of Government data by FFT Education Datalab found that
pupils missing the most schooling are in the poorest areas of the
country. That is compounded by the fact that online remote
schooling has worked less well for poorer families. That
should not be a surprise to anyone. As my hon. Friend the Member
for Mitcham and Morden outlined powerfully before the recess, there
is deeply unequal access to online learning at
home. It should come as no surprise to people that those from the
poorest backgrounds do not necessarily have access to the suitable
devices that they need, but they lack even the broadband internet
access that many people take for granted. The pay-as-you-go
charging rates and the stark figures of how much it costs to access
Oak National Academy or BBC Bitesize is staggering. I agree with my
hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden that the Government
should ensure that no pupil forced to isolate at home does so
without access to the IT and internet access that they need. I call
on internet service providers to play their part too, because there
is more that they could do. It is within their gift, for example,
to make sure that certain websites, such as Oak National Academy or
BBC Bitesize, which are there for legitimate online
learning purposes, are made free to access and should not
count towards people’s data limits. That would be a really good way
for the big internet service providers and telecoms companies to
step up to the plate...
To read the whole debate, CLICK
HERE
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