It’s AV-Zoom let’s go learn

It’s more zoom than gloom for Ellern Mede Schools as even students who have gone on home leave during the COVID-19 outbreak continue to receive lessons and educational support using audio visual sessions with their tutors.

Headteacher Adel Shirbini said: “We are maintaining the young peoples’ education at both schools in London and Moorgate in Rotherham.

“At our London schools we are continuing to offer the full timetable of subjects through the Zoom platform. This enables the young people to connect directly with their usual classroom teachers who are teaching from home. The lessons have been well received by students and hospital staff.”

What is it that the students find this distance learning does for them while they are at home?

Adel said: “It gives the young people a focus to their day and it is something different to the work they are used to doing with clinical teams. Continuing to teach and learn means we can also support those students who would have been sitting for public exams this year to receive a grade commensurate with their study achievements.In most cases we are providing information to the home schools to enable them to make an accurate report of each student’s progress to the exam boards.”

At Ellern Mede Moorgate School, which serves Ellern Mede Group’s newest hospital which is practising gradual admissions since opening, there are a limited number of young people on site, so the school is focusing there on the core curriculum subjects of English, Maths and Science.

Another advantage of enabling young people to access their teachers remotely is that it reduces further the number of people moving between home and site each day, helping to further the risk of cross infection during this outbreak and generally reducing the number of people coming on site each day.

You can read more about what Ellern Mede Hospital is doing to keep patients and staff on site safe on the Ellern Mede Hospital website: https://ellernmede.org/2020/03/27/being-safe-from-covid-19/