Schools must have remote teaching contingency plans ready by the end of September, according to new government guidance.
The Department for Education says it expects schools to give pupils access to high-quality remote resources, and to provide printed resources such as textbooks and workbooks to pupils without internet access.
“Where a class, group or small number of pupils need to self-isolate, or there is a local lockdown requiring pupils to remain at home, we expect schools to have the capacity to offer immediate remote education,” the guidance says.
“Schools are expected to consider how to continue to improve the quality of their existing offer and have a strong contingency plan in place for remote education provision by the end of September.”
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The contingency plans must be sequenced in a way that is linked to the school’s curriculum expectations, and that staff must be trained in the use of online teaching tools.
Schools must also “recognise that younger pupils and some pupils with SEND may not be able to access remote education without adult support, and so schools should work with families to deliver a broad and ambitious curriculum”, the department has said.
The guidance says it expects schools to:
- Set assignments so that pupils have meaningful and ambitious work each day in a number of different subjects.
- Teach a planned and well-sequenced curriculum so that knowledge and skills are built incrementally, with a good level of clarity about what is intended to be taught and practised in each subject.
- Provide frequent, clear explanations of new content, delivered by a teacher in the school or through high-quality curriculum resources and/or videos.
- Gauge how well pupils are progressing through the curriculum, using questions and other suitable tasks and set a clear expectation on how regularly teachers will check work.
- Enable teachers to adjust the pace or difficulty of what is being taught in response to questions or assessments, including, where necessary, revising material or simplifying explanations to ensure pupils’ understanding.
- Plan a programme that is of equivalent length to the core teaching pupils would receive in school, ideally including daily contact with teachers.
