Education has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic in a multitude of ways. Yet, in the face of immense disruption that the health crisis has caused over three academic years to date, the sector has rallied to maintain the best possible learning experiences and outcomes for pupils and stepped up to support the communities it serves.
Bellfield Junior School, a popular and successful community-based school for children aged seven-to-11, is no exception. Set in a deprived area of Birmingham, the school has gone above and beyond during the health crisis not only to keep its pupils safe, but also to act as a central hub for the community and a key support network for children and families.
The school’s headteacher, Nigel Attwood [pictured], sat down with The Leaders Council and candidly recalled his experiences going back to March 2021, when schools reopened once again after the third national lockdown spanning January to March 2021.
Over the first few weeks of returning to school, Attwood highlighted how focus needed to adjust from providing pupils with an education to reintegrating them into school life.
He said: “The third lockdown was a lot harder for the children compared to the first. I think the darker nights and colder weather made it a struggle for them because they couldn’t get outside and do what they wanted to do in their spare time.
“For around three weeks after children returned to school in March 2021, we found that the pupils were a lot more unsettled. They had to get back into their sleep routines, there was a lot of tiredness among them, and it made that first three-to-six weeks just as much about getting the children back used to being in school and resettled again as it was about learning.
“Gradually as the summer term went on, we saw that the children were starting to settle back in to their good learning behaviours that they had before.”
Supporting children and families
Before the third national lockdown was called, Bellfield Junior School had an established online learning platform which enabled pupils to continue with their studies at home. However, the effects of the digital divide within the wider community were also prominent, which required teachers to adapt to ensure that a significant group of pupils was not left cut off from education.
Attwood explained: “Although we had a strong home learning offer in place with a robust online learning platform, we found that after a couple of weeks a lot of parents preferred paper packs. This is indicative of the digital divide in deprived areas. So, we ended up distributing 100 learning packs a week to around a third of our pupils.
“The pitfall of that was that these pupils didn’t need to be online for a certain time in the morning, so they weren’t necessarily in a good daily routine ahead of returning to school and were perhaps going to bed a bit later than normal. When school returned, we had to work closely with parents to get routines back in place and advised on how this would positively affect their children. Fortunately, the majority took that on board and over a short time the situation improved.
“During the third lockdown, we also had a member of staff allocated to a particular group of children. So, the ones working at home either on the online learning platform or by completing learning packs were being supported in the appropriate way. Elsewhere, we had some members of staff who focused on keeping the online platform updated, and some staff looking after the vulnerable children and key workers’ children that were still coming into school.”
Bellfield’s support measures were provided in various ways. Among these, a system of regular emails and phone calls was put in place to ensure that each family could contact the school for support, and that the school was regularly in contact with all pupils. In addition, the school would also step up to assist families with financial worries as and where they arose.
Attwood outlined: “We provided support through a whole system of phone calls and emails and the school stepped up to be that support network that the parents and whole family needed as well as the children. If families needed any support with regards to food parcels, clothing and anything else for the children we were also providing that.
“Although we kept a strong rapport, it still wasn’t the same as being in school. Parents did have their struggles supporting their children with some of the learning, so it was a challenge for our families as much as it was for the school in delivering education remotely. When such struggles are ongoing, the children can become isolated and frustrated and that can make it harder for parents at home. Our regular modes of contact were for the purpose of providing the right support, getting the right focus and making sure the environment at home was right for children to continue to learn.”
More than just a school
In Attwood’s view, the extent of support that schools have provided to their communities during the pandemic is indicative of the fact that the education sector is no longer solely for the purpose of teaching. Instead, schools have found themselves functioning as hubs for their community, providing a plethora of support, support packages and signposting.
“We are educationalists, it is our job. However, a lot of our phone calls home to check-in on the children also developed to include the provision of support for parents. We learned a lot about their struggles, and it should be acknowledged that is difficult for any parent to balance their own working responsibilities with being in the house 24/7 and supporting the children in their learning.
“We conducted a lot of counselling and above all we tried to have the right kind of conversations to support the parents. We’d very regularly remind them what a great job they were doing supporting their children in trying circumstances. With the extension of the free school meals scheme, a lot of our contact with parents also came as we were delivering food parcels to their homes. So, we’d speak to the family from a distance on the doorstep and just try to be there for them.
“Schools these days are very much a part of the community. You do not just have children going there to learn and then returning home again. Schools understand their communities and support them. We’re in a unique position where we can respond to the needs of families outside of our immediate school responsibilities.”
Attwood went on to discuss that a significant facet to the support that schools now provide their pupils and families includes services dedicated to wellbeing, with demand for mental health support having skyrocketed over the course of the pandemic.
“After a decade of cuts to children’s services and because there is a huge backlog in mental health services due to Covid, schools are picking up a lot of the slack in mental health support that children need. We are buying in mental health services and doing a lot of social work. The level of support has even reached the point of helping families fill out and send off a range of support application forms, for things such as housing, finance and much more.
“Further to that, the school has successfully raised funds through charity schemes so that when some of our families have been struggling with financial issues, we can tap into that and have been able to pay off their gas and electric bill as a one-off while they wait to receive the help they need. We have also put mechanisms in place which enable us then to usher affected families toward appropriate longer-term support to help with their finances. Families are struggling and when the support and resources that they need either are not there or are there but there is a lack of awareness, education becomes that central support hub to help find, identify and sometimes even provide support. We are there for our children and for our families and we want them to know they can come and talk to us.”
Balancing the books
For all the measures that Bellfield Junior School has put in place and how successful they have been in keeping the school community safe, implementing them has not been entirely straightforward. Every single measure comes with a financial repercussion, and with school budgets often stretched in more normal times, Attwood told of how every single decision taken had to be managed carefully from a financial perspective.
“We have put a lot of measures in place to ensure that Covid has affected our school as little as possible. While we have been lucky in that sense, these precautions that we have put in place do cost money. We have had to bring in an additional cleaner for four hours per day, and over the five days of the school week that is another 20 hours of work per week we need to pay out for. We have been doing that now for over 18 months, which means we’re paying a considerable amount of money just to keep our school community safe.
“Furthermore, because we are oversubscribed, we have been putting together a savings plan in our budget so that we are ready for when those children leave, and we have some our funding withdrawn. We do not want to go into a deficit budget and by saving, we kept back four per cent of last year’s budget as a contingency. However, because we have done that and our finances are on a stable footing, we are unable to claim any Covid costs back from the government.”
The school’s inability to reclaim Covid-related costs came with a keenly felt sense of injustice, with the decision having stemmed from the fact that Bellfield had been managing its finances prudently. For Attwood, the scenario was also indicative of a disconnect he feels is evident between what occurs in schools and the perception among ministers of what goes on in the sector.
“Since the beginning of the 2021/22 financial year, the pandemic has cost us over £15,000”, Attwood revealed.
“This money is spent on things such as additional cleaning staff, face masks, any PPE we need, extra hand sanitiser stations, paper towels and other materials. When the situation has been changing so rapidly, we haven’t been able to budget for this in advance. For example, we had hoped that after the third lockdown, things would revert to normal and we would not need to keep our additional cleaning staff on, but this hasn’t materialised. The extra cleaner we thought we’d have with us until October half-term remains in place and this could continue throughout the academic year. By the time we reach the summer, we’ll have spent more than £20,000 extra over the year. This is only around £4,000 short of the cost of a newly qualified teacher, and we cannot claim that back.
“It is especially galling when you hear of the amount of money spent on substandard PPE by government and the level of business support loans lost to fraudsters that have been written off. It is a real shame that things like this are being overlooked and we are being penalised. It seems silly that education and children’s services do not seem to be treated the way that they deserve.
“We don’t want to be failing the children because of a lack of resources. Every cutback we must make is something that is taken away from the children in one form or another. This becomes especially difficult when we are not just providing an education but also picking up the children’s support services. If the sector is not adequately resourced now and children are not properly supported, they will ultimately become a further burden on society as adults rather than paying back into the system.”
Overcoming contemporary issues
Alongside the logistical, financial, and emotional challenges of working around the demands of the pandemic, there have been other sensitive issues that Bellfield Junior School has had to manage.
In a world which is more connected than ever before and information is accessible to the fingertips of many through smart devices, Attwood revealed that the school’s staff team had to be very aware of the impact of social media and heightened pupil awareness of global issues.
“The anxiety caused by Covid is one thing. We have seen a lot of ominous messages right the way through coming from various news sources. Children hear these things and they do worry about them just as much as adults do. Social media has played a major part in exposing children to current affairs.
“Social media is also responsible for a plethora of issues in our area and all over the country. We have had to step in and advise parents on safeguarding because the proliferation of social media related complaints coming into school has increased dramatically. More recently, we’ve even had children panicking about what is going on in Ukraine and wondering whether there’ll be another World War because of news articles on the issue and how their peers are reacting to that.
“Addressing issues like this requires transparency and sensitivity. Children know when you are trying to pull the wool over their eyes, so we must work directly with children on these issues and reassure them to help negate their worries. It is about being honest with them in a child-friendly way, and there is always a fine line between those things.”
Going above and beyond
Despite the many challenges thrown at the school over the previous two years, Bellfield has continued to stand tall as a pillar for its community. Reflecting on the school’s successes in navigating such an immense set of challenges to date, Attwood took the time to pay tribute to his staff team who had given everything to help navigate such a difficult period.
“All members of staff across the school, like everyone in education, always go above and beyond. By coming together, we have been able to keep the school going no matter what has been thrown at us. We have been lucky with Covid cases, excluding a three-day blitz in January 2022, but otherwise cases have been low thanks to the precautions we have taken.
“Our staff have adapted when we’ve had Covid-enforced absences, they support each other where there are issues, and they are a tight-knit team who have answered some tough questions in the last two years. They have also come up with some ingenious ways to try and support the children in recovering from the last couple of years. That isn’t just recovering their lost time in education, but also recovering from the emotional strain that they have been put under. There’s been much to process for adults over the last two years, let alone the children.”
Indeed, as Attwood emphasised, every decision taken by the school’s leadership team throughout the health crisis has been taken with the pupils in mind as the utmost priority.
“Having support networks in place for the children in school and seeing the way the staff deal with them when they are struggling is incredible. I think we have done an amazing job in making sure that whatever decisions we make and in every single way we adapt, we do it with the children in mind and make sure that they benefit from what we’ve implemented.
“We have equally strived to make the children aware that with every one of our decisions, we have considered fully how we can best adapt to suit their needs. That goes for when we’re at full capacity and when we’re short staffed. With all that we have come up against, I couldn’t be prouder at how we have conducted ourselves.”
