Parents did some heroic things in lockdown when it came to teaching our students at home. Juggling multiple demands, the vast majority of children and young people managed to get a good education at home. 

But I fear that in the next few weeks, we may find they and their children have been slightly led astray when it comes to the level of progress in learning they believe has been made. And that could get awkward. 

Rapid progress?

Lockdown saw a surge in home learning tools and with so many offering progress tracking, it’s easy to understand why parents would be drawn to them. If you had doubts about how much the child was covering, or whether you were doing the teaching ‘right’, the tracking software offered reassurance. 

But this now gives teachers a problem. 

One of the biggest red herrings in tracking student data is those little progress bars. As the bars filled up, parents could easily have come to believe that their child had completed the entire GCSE specification in just a term.

And yet, their child may not be able to recall much, if anything, of the topics at all. 

A 2010 University of Michigan study showed that progress bars impact both speed and engagement with tasks, acknowledging that “progress indicators can have a deleterious effect on completion rates when the progress moves slowly”, meaning that there’s every chance that a student may rush through content to receive the gratification of a completed bar.

False grades

Another issue is those apps offering age and grade data.

While programmes may be following the curriculum, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact age at which a student is able to demonstrate a skill fluently.

Similarly, apps that give a GCSE grade face similar issues. We know that GCSE grades are calculated across various benchmarks: cohort size and previous grading data are a part of that, but most significant is that students are not given 1-9 grades on individual skills, but their overall performance compared to other students.

Applying a 1-9 grade to an individual skill is misrepresentative of the examinations process and could lead to misunderstanding and frustration when students return to the classroom.

Different viewpoints

So where a parent thinks a child might be in their learning and where they actually are will likely be different. And that may mean some tough conversations where the reality of the situation has to be balanced with not wanting to disparage the efforts made during lockdown.

What if parents demand their child be moved up a set, or tell you the work is too easy, based on the apps?

We need to be honest. We need to explain that while some students will have undoubtedly made progress at home, the curriculum is a wide ocean of skills and knowledge that needs to be thoroughly reviewed and redelivered when students return.

Key learning concepts such as a desirable difficulty and spaced retrieval practice are rarely self-embedded, and students may either be less able than an app suggests or have practised their favourite skill intensely to obtain success (and this is before we remember that they have access to Google…). 

We need to promise to keep an eye on the situation and be honest if the student really has made a huge leap. But we also need to be ready to explain gently if things do indeed turn out to be not as they seem.