Research School Network: The Future of Remote Learning: An Alternative and Supplement to Classroom Teaching Find out how the Tudor Grange Academies Trust are getting all their ducks in a row for high quality remote learning provision.

John Holmes is an Associate Principal with responsibility for curriculum and assessment at Tudor Grange Academies Trust. You can contact John at jholmes@​worcs.​tgacademy.​org.​uk

One of the lessons we can learn from our experience in the last two months is the extent to which many departments rely almost exclusively on classroom teaching as the only way to facilitate learning. Whilst face-to-face teaching will always, rightly, play a key part in provision, the lack of strong alternatives to support independent learning meant that the Trust was unprepared for long term school closures. As a result, many of our children will have learned very little, if any, new material between March and September. This deficit will disproportionately affect our most vulnerable children and the schools serving vulnerable communities and, by now, the gap between our most vulnerable students and their already-privileged peers will be wider than it has ever been.

This endemic over-reliance on classroom teaching is a problem, even outside of the current school closures, perpetuating gaps when schools operate normally. It is why, all too often, when children miss lessons there is no mechanism to support them in catching up missed work. Teachers assume they can only teach through face-to-face contact but lack the time for extra contact; children lack the ability to learn independently because they don’t normally need to learn outside of classroom contexts. Thus children are caught in a cycle where absence breeds failure, which breeds more absence and yet more failure. A similar cycle is started when children, even those who attend well, have gaps in learning. Teachers don’t have time to go through extra lessons with those children and children lack the skill to catch up independently. The class moves on and gaps multiply and become entrenched.

Our most vulnerable children are the ones most likely to fall into this cycle and, by the time Year 11 intervention arrives, it is too late to repair the damage. Indeed, even that extra intervention, which almost inevitably takes the forms of extra lessons, reveals the deep reliance on classroom teaching. A child has around 800 maths lessons between Year 7 and 11: what reason is there to think 20 extra lessons after school or during PE lessons in the run up to examinations would make a significant difference?

Our inability to address gaps in learning is about to be more serious than it ever has been, because, right now, the best scenario we can hope for is children arriving in school in September with more gaps than ever before. Our worst case scenario is extended disruption to school opening, which will continue to widen and deepen these gaps. We need to find ways that allow all children to learn new material that do not require being sat in a classroom with a teacher, and we need to do it before September. This means thinking carefully about our remote learning offer.

One of the key messages from the EEF’s Distance Learning Rapid Evidence Assessment is that the elements of effective learning are more important than the medium of delivery. Clear explanations, scaffolding and feedback are more or less as effective when delivered remotely as when delivered in person. What we need, then, is for each stage of the lesson cycle to be reproduced virtually: clear explanations; opportunities for initial practice (supported by automatic or self-assessment); modelling of more complex tasks and opportunities for teacher feedback when children complete these tasks. More detail is provided overleaf where a remote learning equivalent is provided for each strand of our current QFT. We need these lesson cycles available for all key curriculum content, curated into years, topics and learning cycles within TGI-space with clear curriculum maps ensuring that the layout is easily navigable.

Fully realised, such a remote learning platform future-proofs us against any future or prolonged school closures. More importantly, it serves as a powerful opportunity for addressing gaps and facilitating strong teaching. If children have gaps in their learning they can have high quality input outside of the classroom to address that. Intervention can help children access and use these resources, generating entirely bespoke learning routes. Teachers will be able to adopt a blended approach: drawing on remote activities as DIRT tasks, using virtual resources to deliver the explanation phase of the lesson and then practice in class, or vice versa. The traditional conception of ​“homework” can be abandoned as we place more emphasis on the autonomy and regulation of learners to set their own study patterns and address their own needs, rather than being given one-size-fits-all tasks. This platform will give us an opportunity to inculcate and take advantage of the powerful Tudor habits: habits that will ensure children can learn independently during post-16 provision and beyond. Whatever league tables say, teaching children precisely these habits is a deeply important, and often neglected, aim of education.

This vision is achievable. We have hundreds of teachers who are able to make resources that can go online. Teachers who are highly motivated to help children, who now, more than ever, are sympathetic to the need to try new things, and who are suddenly using technology in ways that they would not have thought possible just three months ago.

To be sure, there are significant challenges. We must co-ordinate the work of these teachers to make sure resources are not duplicated and link to one another in coherent ways; curate those resources so they are well-organised and easy to find, check they are sufficiently high quality for general use; and ensure these resources feature in teachers’ practice. A meeting of the teaching and learning leads, to discuss this vision and ways to address these four logistical challenges is an important first step.