After pupils and teachers have spent six months away from the classroom as a result of the Covid-19 lockdown, the education sector has had to get to grips with the challenge of bringing children back into schools among their peers and reintegrated into full-time learning. In late June, Nigel Attwood, the headteacher of Bellfield Junior School in Birmingham, spoke to the Leaders Council about the challenges that schools could expect to face in September. Now, a month following the start of term, Nigel lifts the lid on how the school has been coping since reopening its doors and discusses how wellbeing has been at the heart of its approach.
All of Bellfield Junior School’s classes and year groups have now returned, and with around one third of the school’s pupils listed on the vulnerable register, there have been challenges and the school has had to quickly determine the stages different pupils are at with their learning and identify what further support they need both academically and pastorally. It has also left the school facing financial pressures and burdened much additional responsibility upon the shoulders of its head, Nigel Attwood. But through it all, morale remains high.
Speaking on BBC Radio Four’s World at One programme to reporter Emma-Jane Kirby, Bellfield’s deputy head Claire du Toit said: “I think one of the challenges we’ve found is concentration. It is hard to concentrate for long periods of time after so much time out and the thought is that you want to rush in and get caught up but we’ve had to take a step back, instil confidence and not overload the learning.
“We are not doing progress tests, but teachers are assessing in the first couple of weeks and we’re having pupil progress meetings regularly to see where the gaps are.”
A source of frustration for Nigel Attwood has been the consistently changing guidelines coming from ministers to ensure that the school remains compliant with Covid-secure procedures, and it applies additional pressure to his role as the head of the school. Indeed, he is already taking a hands-on role on the school playground at the start of the day, lunchtime and at home times to ensure pupils remain in their year group bubbles and that parents comply with social distancing.
Nigel said: “There have been a lot of teachers in contact with each other saying we’ve spotted that there’s been an update and asking what the changes to the guidelines are. And I must keep working through and making sure we do the right things. It is a lot of pressure because as headteacher, everyone expects you to have the answer and know what is going on. And the reality is you’re trying to keep in touch with it like everyone else is and stay one step ahead.”
While teachers have strived to ensure that the pressures of the ongoing situation are not allowed to filter through into the classroom environment, another challenge that school governors have been forced to address is how to manage its finances with the lack of any significant support from the government. Indeed, regular sanitisation and keeping the school safe has taken an extra £16,000 out of an already tight budget.
Nigel explained: “We have done a lot of work looking at the budget and where we are. We put a lot of money into educational visits pre-Covid which we are not doing now because of costs and because Covid dictates that we cannot. We have been fortunate in the last couple of years as a school with outside donations that we have received and that has helped us, but other schools aren’t as lucky and I know that many are worried about the way their finances are going this year.”
Yet, the emphasis in Bellfield Junior School’s entire strategy has been wellbeing, for both pupils and staff. In a normal school year, it spends £114,000 on pastoral care, around 7.5 per cent of its overall budget. Part of its strategy to keep providing this care during lockdown saw the school’s rainbow room safe space move online, to allow troubled children to connect with members of staff via Zoom and offload their problems. While this has been successful, there are concerns over some vulnerable pupils that teachers have not yet been able to contact.
Pastoral care manager Lorraine Harvey commented: “We are always keen to get vulnerable children into school because it is their safe place. There is a couple of children we’ve still not seen, and some haven’t been in school at all and it is a worry because we don’t know where they are and what is going on at home.”
Elsewhere, Nigel has additional concerns for the wellbeing of his staff and the pressure that they are likely to come under, amid the need to get children caught up with their studies and ready to sit May’s SATs.
He admitted: ““We are asking quite a lot of each other at the moment, and I am lucky to have staff who are willing to put the work in but I don’t want their wellbeing affected. Morale is good up to now, but we are finding that people are already tired because there is just so much to think about in keeping Covid-compliant and getting pupils caught up. On a particular day, one teacher who was taking note figured out that between them and their class, teacher and pupils had to take time out for handwashing 190 times in a day.”
What has been a major boost for the school is that the pupils have relished returning to the classroom and being back among their peers, which has lifted much of the pressure of a complicated restart. Now that those issues are behind the school, Nigel Attwood and his staff are determined to concentrate on the curriculum recovery plan to ensure Bellfield Junior School’s pupils can reach the levels of attainment that they deserve.
“The pupils are happy to be back in, that’s the best bit. Now, as staff, we must concentrate on the curriculum recovery plan.”
Photo by Thomas Park on Unsplash
