The Berkshire school?s phenomenal success in creating an online lockdown community earned it a spot as a ?nalist. Headmaster Jeremy Banks explains how teachers, parents and pupils were able to make it happen
Lockdown came fast and there was little time to prepare. No one likes change, least of all this seismic, scarily dystopian one that made senior leadership planning meetings feel more like government COBRA committee briefings.
Building a virtual learning platform was something that none of us, as passionate educators, really wanted to do. There was an initial sense of incredulity, disquiet and loss from the whole school community as we buckled down to the ?new normal?.
There were immediate practical challenges to be overcome: for some boys, their home set up wouldn?t automatically sync with Virtual Caldicott, others had issues with their broadband. Some boys had to access lessons from a different country in a different time zone, and some could only log on in limited bursts because of family work commitments. Teachers had to be creative about how they delivered the curriculum: what works well in the classroom doesn?t necessarily translate well to online learning. They therefore had to continually adapt and modify their delivery. But far from it being the isolating experience we feared, the boys benefited from Virtual Caldicott in ways we never could have imagined, and it quickly developed into an exciting melting pot of visionary collaboration. Our incredible pupils dem...