We know children learn best when they are at school, surrounded by their friends and teachers. Attendance is essential for pupils to get the most out of their school experience.

There may, however, be times when a pupil is unable to attend because their school is forced to restrict attendance to some or all pupils, for example during any disruption that may be caused by upcoming strike action. In exceptional cases, a child might also be unable to attend for medical reasons but well enough to learn from home.

In these circumstances, a school may consider providing remote education, allowing children to keep on track with their education and stay connected to their teachers and friends.

Here we tell you what you need to know about learning from home.

When can school children learn from home?

It’s really important that remote education is not viewed as an equal alternative to attendance in school. For this reason, we only consider it as a last resort when the alternative would be no education.

We may suggest that pupils should learn from home ‘remotely’ if pupils are unable to attend school in person due to closures or restrictions on attendance. This might, for example, be due to adverse weather or because there are higher than normal levels of staff absence. Restrictions to school attendance and closures only happen in very exceptional circumstances and usually only where school leaders or the local authority (also known as the council) have decided that it would not be possible to open a school safely.

How children access remote education?

This will be reviewed in consultation with staff and be adaptable to the individual needs and circumstances of pupils and their families.

Work provided during periods of remote education is high quality, ambitious, and covers an appropriate range of subjects. 

Not every pupil is able to access online or digital remote education, and we will always consider working to overcome these barriers.

Remote education might include:

• Recorded and / or live direct teaching time, delivered by a teacher.
• Work accessed via a digital education platform – these are likely to be platforms the school use regularly and that parents and children are already familiar with
• Tasks set for a child to complete independently and reading assignments.
• Access to high-quality lessons developed by external online resource providers the school trusts and recommends.
• Printed resources or workbooks sent home.

How does it work at Stubbin Wood?

On the day of the closure, parents will be notified via Class Dojo. Work will then be posted on the class story, for the day. We then follow this up with a phone call to discuss any issues with parents.