By Thomas Richardson
Education systems across the world have been thrown into disarray by COVID-19. In Scotland, all schools closed from the end of March 2020 (except for a few children of essential workers who attended so called ‘HUB’ schools). At the time of writing of this article, in May 2020, it is unclear when and how Scottish schools will reopen. Certainly, Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, has suggested in the last few days that the reopening of schools in Scotland is likely to be staggered whereby not all children will return to school at the same time and priority may be given to children at certain stages within the system (e.g. those due to transition from primary to secondary school).
Given that many children, particularly those with additional support needs, find change and transitions difficult and stressful (McLaughlin, Monteith and Sneddon, 2001), the changes which have happened as children have made the transition from the ‘normality’ of attending school along with their peers to learning ‘online’ from home, supported by family where possible, will surely have had an effect upon their educational progress. Likewise, the process of coming out of ‘lockdown’ and returning to school, whatever form that takes, is also likely to be challenging for many children and teaching staff alike, after an absence of many weeks or months.
As a teacher of Additional Support Needs (ASN), and the co-ordinator of ASN transitions in my school, I’m aware that a number of the pupils I work with are going to require considerable extra support to transition back into attending school, perhaps especially for those moving up from primary for whom secondary school will already be new and strange, notwithstanding the effects of the virus.
From my own experiences of teaching pupils remotely and from anecdotal evidence from one or two colleagues, while we have increased our experience of using online teaching tools like Microsoft Teams and Skype, we would hesitate to say that we are able to teach effectively in such a remote fashion. For most of our pupils, some of whom have significant ASN, we would assume that they may not be able to learn as effectively from home as they could with the close support of staff at school and the diversion of being able to meet friends face-to-face. There is evidence which suggests that even adult students may struggle to use online learning platforms, like the ‘Universal Design for Learning’ (UDL) approach described by Lohmann, Boothe, Hathcote and Turpin (2018). Learning via this platform aims to be (2018:3): ‘…primarily student-directed…its use may reduce the likelihood of unintended barriers in the classroom…’ Despite this, Lohmann et al. state that only about a quarter of students attended the weekly Twitter chats and collaboration sessions with their tutors.
Nationally, across Scotland, children with ASN are particularly struggling at this time due to being away from the normal routine and support of school. Families of children with ASN feel that progress made in school may be lost and some are struggling with emotional and behavioural issues due to isolation. Requests for respite services have increased markedly at this time. The author wonders whether such families may be finding it particularly difficult to access online learning during the current crisis.
Further research is no doubt required to establish how well, if at all, Scottish school children with ASN have been able to engage with online learning and what support they will require to re-integrate back into the school education system.
Dr Thomas Richardson is a school teacher from Aberdeen. His doctoral study investigated post-school transitions of young people with additional support needs and the impact of legislation on collaboration between different professionals. You can read some of the results here Richardson, T. D., Jindal-Snape, D., & Hannah, E. F. S. (2017). Impact of Legislation on Post-School Transition Practice for young people with additional support needs in Scotland. British Journal of Special Education, 44(3), 239-256. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8578.12178
Image copyright: Divya Jindal-Snape
We would be grateful if you could kindly complete this brief questionnaire about this blog post. It will take you no more than 5 minutes. https://dundee.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/covid-19-and-transitions-individual-blog-post
