Author: jtrgroup

Today it was announced that the mobile phone companies are going to make thousands of government-funded lessons, produced by Oak National Academy, available free of charge until schools re-open.

You might think that we, as a company that sells our online learning service into schools, would be up in arms about this.

Not so! 

We can see that the £millions of public money spent creating resources that are then made available ENTIRELY free to consumers is great for our business going forwards.

Why?   

Well, Oak National Academy now sets the standard for ‘free’ online education.

This pandemic will end (eventually!), and when it does, Ofsted will immediately start inspecting schools on their readiness to deal with another one.

They will judge each school’s readiness for high-quality online learning and in the cold light of day, these free resources will be found to lack impact on learning.

That’s when schools will look around for services that offer high-quality learning wherever learners are – in school or at home.

Companies like ours, who’ve spent years developing online teaching and learning services underpinned by powerful pedagogies will be able to answer the call. I look forward to those conversations.

In the meantime, if you’re a school leader who understands that free is not best (and has got a spare moment in the midst of this craziness) give us a call and ask how YouTeachMe is hands-down better for your learners, families, staff team, governors, MAT and for you.

It’s a serious topic from my perspective. I’ve seen things published recently saying that the new found ways to access education could mean no more ‘snow days’. That’s not what YouTeachMe would advocate and it’s definitely not where I stand as a teaching professional. Yes, we provide video teaching. Yes, you can send it home to learners. Yes, they can sit in a warm room and learn with the support of their parent or carer. But can we all stop and ponder for a moment on whether tech and teaching should replace joy and fun?

One Friday lunchtime, quite a few years ago, we got ‘the call’. As I was interrogated it started snowing, heavily. It got so bad that the lead inspector called me on Saturday morning to ask if I wanted to postpone the Monday start on Health and Safety grounds.  I’d spent 3 hours writing risk assessments for the snow play activities my teaching team had just planned, so I said no! The interesting thing is that I was a new head, we were a school in real difficulty and the extra time we could have bought ourselves would have been very useful. But no, as a team we decided it was more important for our infant children to be wrapped up and outside, learning (playing) in the snow.

Why? Well it was more than just ‘we don’t get enough of the white stuff over the winter’. It was about quality learning. It was to do with fun, laughter, letting children be children. Allowing them to lead their play and get excited about it.

Some chose to lay in the snow and flap their arms and legs, then jump up with glee to see their angel in the snow. Others rolled the snow to make their snowmen (or women or dogs!); it was a bit of a challenge to have enough props on hand to make smiley faces, proper noses and hats atop misshapen heads. Then there were the snowballs. Children were allowed to make their own and for 30 seconds, pelt members of staff willing to participate (just me!). Let me tell you, half a minute really can feel like a lifetime but it was an experience they’ll never forget.

And Ofsted stood by and witnessed all this. They watched as our children enjoyed the excitement of nature and the freedom of play. And they included it in their report.

So I say yes, of course, academic progress is vital. Yes, learning should be equally supported in school and at home. But let’s not forget that any child will get more out of being in the snow with their friends, school staff (or family if the school boilers pack in) than they will get from being trapped in doors, learning ‘the curriculum’ and looking longingly at the white stuff.

I stand by snow angels, snowmen and snowballs being a must do activity for EVERY child at ANY school.

Paul Rose

My why? It’s always been the desire to make the world a better place.

When I taught, I did my very best for all of the kids in my class.

As a school leader I worked for the good of my whole school community; the learners, their parents and the whole staff team.

Have you had your why rocked?

I have; I was constantly frustrated as a headteacher. By the need to jump through the endless hoops of a game you simply can’t win. In education success is just temporary, rules are changed and goalposts moved regularly. Things that were measured didn’t matter and things that mattered weren’t measured.

How do you get your why back?

Today, through my company YouTeachMe, I’m privileged to work with amazing specialist and mainstream schools, improving the things that matter to us all. I’m proud to say that inclusion is at the heart of everything we do.

Together we’ve created something amazing and we’ve proven that it makes the world better for everyone involved. My why is on my sleeve, plain for all to see.

So, if game playing is getting tiring, perhaps now’s the right time to join our Founding Pioneer schools? You can find your why by making the world the place you’d like it to be for your learners, families, colleagues and most importantly, for yourself.

We’ve just launched the SEND Pioneer 100 programme. It’s free of charge and low on effort. So, if you’d like you, your learners, families and colleagues to benefit from the work we’ve been doing in recent years, just click the link youteachme.co.uk/pioneer100/ to find out more and register your interest.

Many of my closest family and friends work in schools. Since this pandemic began they have

quietly and bravely done remarkable work, yet no-one stood on the streets to applaud them. 

It got me thinking. Why isn’t education loved like the NHS?

Watch 24 Hours in A&E and Educating Yorkshire and you’ll see talented doctors and teachers striving to improving the lives of others, often at the expense of their own wellbeing.  

So why is it that doctors are (rightly) praised and teachers (very wrongly) maligned?

I think the reasons are many, but the essence of the problem can be distilled into just two words – service and system.

The NHS is a service created to help people.

Education is a system created to meet societal need.

Anyone accessing our healthcare service is treated as an individual. It must be this way in order to deliver the best treatment. It’s natural then, that each patient feels seen, heard and valued. That’s what makes it special in most peoples’ eyes.

Of course, this is not the case in the education system. Parents and their children quickly come to understand that there’s little room for individual needs, interests and wishes.  Homogenisation must be delivered at any price. The human cost of this ‘systematic’ approach to education is incalculable. 

This is wrong and I feel so passionately about it, that seven years ago I walked out on my headship to try and develop a sustainable way to turn our education system into an education service.

In the time since, we’ve worked with amazing mainstream, special and deaf schools, exploring ways that technology can help them work together to personalise education for each and every child.

In doing so, we’ve discovered ways for each school to deliver the teaching they want, to the learners they choose, wherever they are, and whenever they need it.

This new way of enabling schools to learn and teach together delivers personalisation of teaching in any location. It’s almost like it was built for a global pandemic!

The schools we have worked in partnership with have (amongst other things) found new and

innovative ways to:

Personalise teaching to stretch all learners in all subjects, regardless of age and ability, starting from those with the greatest additional needs

• Engage all parents and carers in their child’s teaching
• Teach essential life skills more effectively, especially to the most vulnerable
• Support educators to learn from each other – secondary learning from primary, mainstream learning from special, deaf teachers learning from, and supporting hearing teachers

Schools have always known that working together is the only way to improve. Brutal though this time is, now’s the time to seize every chance to work together and provide a quality, personalised education for every child.

In doing so, I reckon that we’ll turn this unlovable system into a much-loved service.