A week into the lockdown and home schooling, here we review what have we learnt from our subscribers around the globe and what can we do going forward to make the most out of this unfortunate situation.

What lessons can we learn from our subscribers around the globe?

As teachers and students across Asia begin to look forward to getting back to school, countries including the USA and UK are just starting out on their remote learning experience. A lot can be learned from the impressive learning infrastructure the international schools in Asia created at such short notice. We spoke to three schools, two in China and one in Kuwait about how they have managed the COVID-19 situation so effectively and what advice they have for school just starting out on their remote learning experience.

Unlike countries including the UK and US, the decision to close all schools in China came very quickly. As the first region to experience enforced isolation, the pressure on schools was immense. As Paul Kelly, head of secondary at The British International School (BISS), based in Puxi, the historic centre of Shanghai explains, “We had just broken up for the Chinese New Year holiday when we received the call on the Sunday evening to tell us that schools would be closed. Initially the suggestion was that the closure could be for three weeks; we’re now into our seventh week.”

For most international schools, many of the staff and students were overseas visiting their families and had left their iPads and laptops at home. Added to this, as people began to realise that China was a badly effected country, no one was in a rush to return!

The potential of teaching remotely became increasingly challenging.

At BISS, Paul soon realised that its Microsoft Office 365 contract comes with 1 Terabyte (TB) of Cloud storage. This meant that once he’d established a connection, he was then able to upload all the learning material into different Clouds. For example, the English department could have access to their central repository, while the maths department had their own area.

The British School of Kuwait’s (BSK) priority on day one was to set up Google Hangouts for each of the classes; functionality is limited but it has served its purpose. The school already structured its learning and assessment around its virtual learning environment (VLE), so when they were given such short notice of the school’s closure this formed the basis of their remote l

BISS already had a learning system in place; at the end of each day the teachers historically provided a summary of the lessons that the children had attended, including what they’d learned. The school decided to flip this idea. As Paul explains, “Instead of Mr. and Mrs. Jones receiving a note to say that Liam had science in Period 1 where the class learned about the ultrastructure of cells then in Period 2 he had PE, the lesson summary became an outline the learning objectives of each day, what resources the students should use and what homework was expected. Instead of going out at the end of each day, we sent it out at 8:15 in the morning.”

The only problem was the time difference, for the 50 per cent of students who were still based in their home country; from New Zealand to Chicago. Some teachers started recording their lesson on their smart phones and then sending this out to the children.

Paul said, “GCSEPod was recommended to us by a colleague at another Nord Anglia school. We had to react quickly and set up the GCSEPod accounts for all of our secondary aged students; giving them remote access to quality content through over 3,000 video Pods covering all areas of the curriculum. Thankfully it was easy to set up and there was no learning curve.”

The British School of Kuwait found that the short three to five-minute video Pods have provided the learning, and the short question banks assess their level of understanding. “We can’t see their exercise books but we can see which Pods they’ve watched, how they have performed on the assessments and whether I need to step in to give them additional support,” explains David. “It’s proving to provide a real development hump for the students, while cutting down on teacher work-load.”

The solution we’ve found is that GCSEPod provides a list of the top student users, so I’ve been able to write letters to the parents and students in recognition of their high study scores; right now it’s all about motivating them to continue to learn and recognise that it’s no fun working from home.”

In the rare incidence where set homework is not completed by a student, the policy at The British International School is to leave it for a couple of days. If by the third day nothing has been received, the teacher will send the student a nice email to remind them of the set tasks. If still nothing is received the year leader will get involved and telephone the parents.