0:00 Introduction
0:38 Mental health, social interaction and development
6:38 Online lessons: the good and the bad
17:54 Cancelled exams and formative versus summative assessment
36:13 Conclusion

Introduction

[Music] The Education Lounge podcast [Music] welcome to episode 5 of The Education Lounge podcast I’m john and this project um today we’re Going to talk about um how do people fare during the lockdown period how did children fare during that period and how it affects their education mental health and so on um and exams Obviously so I think we’re going to start the first thing I have on my agenda is mental health so with the lockdown periods obviously children weren’t able to socialize with their friends see other people and

Mental health, social interaction and development

Really they had very limited interaction with the outside world um furthermore they’re unable to um sort of do the things that they they do day-to-day such as sport attend School etc um so we’re going to talk a bit about the findings in in terms of the literature so if we look at some of the statistics so this is from the office of national Statistics it said it says that four in 10 11 to 16 year olds felt that lockdown had made their life worse okay three in ten reported no change and three in ten reported lockdown had

Made their life better but overall we can see that I made their life worse because four intense uh more than three in ten um more than half of 16 of 11 to 16 year olds with a probable Mental disorder said their life was worse under lockdown so you’ve got sort of mental illness um sort of compounded by some of the Well I don’t know if you experienced any sort of issues during that time but yeah I mean the very fact that well we discussed it the fact that we’ve gone for more walks during lockdown kind of shows that we

Were more anxious because he used walks to yeah yeah um making the best of a bad situation well I mean if you’re stuck in Your in your house like you’re the whole time working [Music] I hated it then I loved it then I hated it again you’re bored of it yeah I mean the beginning day I was like I just don’t like being stuck in one place like that yeah and then being able to

Like literally wake up your desk is right there no commuting or traveling in so when I got to that point when you finished working I’m already at home yeah that I loved I loved that I had a setup and everything yeah it sounds good I don’t know So like I I’d work at the we’ve got this kitchen island and I’d work there and the light would stream in and it was really relaxing yeah so out of my laptop there and other ipad and various other things I got an Ipad specifically yeah yeah I think I I upgraded mine during that time yeah just it was really good for teaching as well because using using your ipad drawing out mathematical figures and all that kind of stuff when it

Knocks the little uh like if you’re doing non-verbal or mouse it locks the shapes perfectly in place for you as well yeah um yeah it’s I had a big setup as well well I had a two screens ipad underneath laptop on one side speakers the whole yeah I think it was incredible How adaptable people can be because at first it was yeah it was just just the effort of of working from home even though it seems like it you think about it in your head I’ve got more time To work from home and that kind of thing and I really need to get out of bed go to work commute and all that stuff but there is an effort associated with it do you find it good do you find you you got like a lot more actual work done I did I got a lot more

Done but at the same time like because there were fewer people around me I I did I definitely felt like well my mind just kind of put off the fact that you know I’ve got friends and stuff that I want to see And it kind of adapted to the fact that we were on our own but some people especially I think like more extroverted people um they must have really struggled with that because you know they’re really used to people Or people in hr and stuff like that you know that kind of personality that they always want to hang out with with people every day and they’re p people people um yeah they they must have found that really difficult um even though you’ve got you’ve got a

Zoom and various tools to deal with that it’s not the same it’s just not it isn’t the same there’s so many like non-verbal cues and things that you would yeah pick up and believe in just that just people’s energy you can’t really yeah For the most part through screening because most of your communication actually is in your body language yeah and all you can see is like from the neck up yeah you don’t you don’t really see much much there um what about um With students specifically like did you notice obviously we see a range of students um from state schools private schools all kinds of um walks of life and and ages as well yeah and age groups did you notice anything in particular

With certain age groups or I found the younger ones were like the younger probably I was like year three or you know year three year two they were difficult online they have to have sometimes have parents say with them especially year one year

Online lessons: the good and the bad

Two they’ve got a parent oh yeah with them year three they started to be sort of more independent more independent than they were okay online the best people to teach online were yeah fours up to probably year Eight or nine keys through because they’re they’re still interactive they still have conversations they keep their cameras on and their which is something that GCSE kids definitely don’t do click off click off blank screen for an Hour there’s not reading body language and then there’s absolutely no some of my yeah some of the gcc ones were okay in that yeah on the most part that was the raw though but that was the thing that people did if they kept their microphones on the

Camera would definitely be off um so it’s very hard to see whether they’re working to see whether you can tell by people’s faces whether they get what you’re talking about or they don’t I’ve noticed that some I was have I’ve had a year six class And there was I I did notice that there was the odd student who before the london were really progressing and doing really well and then during that period online um really struggled Um with the change in interaction whereas other other students especially the ones who I think are slightly more it’s happy they enjoyed the novel concealer at first at least I think it everyone got bored with it like

Like over like yeah the first few weeks were great there wasn’t one there wasn’t one parent that said oh yeah I prefer online that’s true not what every single one has said you think face to face can we prefer face to face Even and especially as they get older because they’re more likely to I find that they’re more willing to share their deeper feelings and they’re probably more aware of their mental health and that kind of thing they I thought it was easier to see When they were affected when when they were like jesus eh I noticed that there was a lot more um like people were obviously under motivated on that kind of thing especially when they they canceled exams

Which we’ll come on to but I thought it was also just the fact that they didn’t feel like they were receiving or they were maybe anxious about the education they were receiving something else that Is obvious from the literature that I’ve read so I’ve done we’ve done some research on this and um it points out that the impact on on girls as opposed to boys was was tended to be more pronounced so girls were more Likely to feel stressed and feel anxiety about you know the situation um so that that creates a bit of a gender divide yeah well I guess um girls are more

Social and they also at that age they actually care more about their school working grades and yeah guys that boys at that age don’t care as much on the whole like Obviously yeah I mean I mean we know that um from days that goals have have generally um outperformed boys at a national level um in terms of exam performance and that kind of thing and yeah I think there is definitely a Girls are a lot more focused on those results and stuff like that so being in the position where they don’t know really what they’ve been judged on um that that can also be a bit of a problem and demotivating um because I have quite a

Few girls working with me at GCSE and they all said that they all said that they were stressed out and anxious and that kind of thing and probably more stressed out anxious than they’d usually be um in fact um a lot of People ended up taking more exams in this situation than they would have otherwise um because schools wanted to gather enough data for teachers to deliver these grades um In the most professional manner possible and you can understand why schools did that but I think it ended up just being overloading it just overloaded a lot of of students quite early on um anyway so the next well

We talked a little bit about online lessons um but let’s just summarize some of the good and the bad points um on the good side can you think of Of anything that we can learn from this and sort of take moving forward they’re good for being online I’d say some math lessons and like verbal nonverbal lessons were Easier purely because of this technology yeah and it has made me think like it’s quite tempting to get a few screens and just plug the ipad in and you know because you can draw directly on the paper and stuff like that yeah it was easier

Than some ways to teach maps because you it’s so much faster creating shapes and figures and graphs and stuff you think something like coordinates for example I was doing that with done on the key stage very over lockdown Um I just drop a pdf into my notes app and you can literally show them you go across here and we’ve got the little lazy thing on goodness you go across here you go up there it’s there whereas if you if you’re sitting in a classroom with your booklet and they’ve all got Their booklets you kind of it’s very hard to show them what you’ve got to basically go out individually and go I’m out whereas I’m here you can just go and everyone sees it yeah so and then you can one and then even after that

Once you’ve done your lesson because you obviously you write your notes on that piece of paper you can then send that booklet with teacher notes to everyone in the past yeah that’s true I found it it was good Working one-to-one specifically yeah in fact I’m still doing that at the moment I did one yesterday yeah every week still got a few yeah working one to one specifically because the issue that I had with online was gauging student Understanding yeah and sometimes that took a while to um you have to really sort of delve into you know what have you got there and then obviously in something like maths it’s not just a matter of getting

The answer yes how do you show how do you show that it’s correct it’s like the working and the organizing yeah if anything getting the answer is lower down the list yeah quite far down the list it’s always like do you understand how it works do You understand how he got that and presenting your answer well that’s a big part of that well this yeah this goes on to some of the bad stuff about going online when you are trying to look over people’s work Can you hold up your notes to the camera left down right there stop don’t don’t move yeah it looks good yeah and if the connection’s bad you can barely see it anyway whereas in class you can see have they made decent notes is it organized well is it neat is it

Clear there was um something that I something I’m had more trouble with was uh english because like writing to us I think you know if you give them a writing task To do is it’s not just you can get them to read out what they’ve written but so much of it is about correcting those basic errors you know you want them to to know when they make a grammatical error or Something like that or um missed you know missing commas and suffering punctuation and spelling how do you address it um it you can get them to upload work so

Scanning work or something like that but then again you’ve got you’ve got students who don’t have that facility available I mean they’ve all got they’ve all got phone themselves they can scan but the thing is even then they don’t always know how to use it when they when even if they do know how To use it like you get a six-year-old your parent has to do it so it’s not even that they’ll send they’ll send um homework attached so who which which other hundreds of students is this like who is it yeah well and then I’ve had Them where they scan the paper and after doing it and the pages aren’t first the files aren’t numbered so that they’re and they they come up in all a jump whole jumbled order and if for example they’ve taken a picture of page and left calf the page number or the question number

You can’t tell what order it’s in who’s done the work yeah that tells you which teacher it’s supposed to go to what class is for yeah which mark’s game to use I mean there’s there’s so many things but I Think what I’ve taken away from it is you’ve got you’ve got the added reach of online so you can reach students that you might not have been able to reach before yeah geographically specifically but I think what I’ve taken away from it is these Some technological things are are great so you’ve got the drawing the figures and that kind of stuff and graphs but then I don’t think it really doesn’t replace classroom teaching and really what you

Can learn from from this is that you can augment it but you can’t replace it um unless there’s some kind of vr solution in the future that sort of leads I don’t know you being able to create a Version yeah think we suppose we spoke about this in our very first podcast well the technology is just so far so far off um what’s the next thing that I wanted to talk about exams a little bit um

Cancelled exams and formative versus summative assessment

So obviously we’ve had two years where the students haven’t taken I mean they have taken a lot of exams finally enough but they haven’t taken the formative assessments that haven’t taken formal exams Um to achieve their grades now there’s quite a lot of issues um there’s quite a lot of good points and quite a lot of bad points um but let’s just start with what do you Think about sort of cancelling exams I mean there was no way around it really yeah especially the first the first set because it was such a sudden like okay we’re not doing it

Yeah and there to figure out how to replace that personally I don’t feel like exams accurately test a person’s ability to do something what do they test I mean they test memory test memory a lot of people can can not do anything and then cram in the short-term memory you know it goes down on paper and then it’s gone yeah short-term memory is very important when It comes to exams what about I prefer I mean do we talk about the different types of learners all the time auditory visual yeah um I it’s this I can’t remember exactly what it was I think there’s three there’s three ways of knowing

Whether you or three good ways of learning something and in the top level is if you can teach it to somebody else you remember it more yeah level below that is I think watching somebody else do it and then underneath that is Like I think listening and then on the face reading it yourself and trying to figure it out there’s a few I can’t remember the exact thing there’s a few levels to it um yeah yeah I mean I mean I mean Yeah the the thing is is obviously different learning styles and um those people who are able to identify the way that they learn have a big advantage in an exam situation yeah

So what would you I mean I think I know what would you say your one is I generally remember what I listened to so that actually helps me a lot in the exam situation because if at school If I had listened to it then I retained it without much practice but then some people need like they they’re visual learners or their um kinesthetic learners so they I mean things like I’ll give you an example this year a lot of children haven’t been doing ex science experiments because they haven’t been able to access that and then you’re taking away so consensual wasn’t it yeah you’re

Taking away that concrete yeah the concrete element of learning that appeals to that type of learner yeah whereas like someone like me I’ll just listen to the teacher say something I’ll just remember that and that’ll be represented yeah if you was a Learner like you wouldn’t have made that’s too much well I’m not I’ve just got bored like watching the teacher on the screen that kind of thing but I think that’s some that’s the main thing is like even if it’s I haven’t no knowing anyone who’s Been in a better position because of this in terms of their learning um it definitely like even if they’re really yeah a lot of students are really dedicated and hard working and even they got sick of it

So I haven’t noticed any positive positives in that sense but I think most people are further off um obviously like we can’t tell all of the effects of this because you won’t see the essex for years to come yeah It’s really difficult to say what the effects are now but that’s not just yeah that’s not just exam related that is everything you won’t you won’t see it for years but it will you’ll see it reveal itself but the economic impact as well um so going back to the formative Summative yeah so there’s two schools of thought there’s this idea that students shouldn’t really be assessed by examination only um or they should be assessed by examination

Only because it’s more objective as it were um and then you’ve got this idea that um the teacher’s feedback is the most valuable thing um what what’s your fault on that I mean for me I I I never really liked formal assessments and formal you know papers and I understand why they’re necessary and I understand why are they Well I guess I help people to get through the stuff the papers and things so they might not like it either a lot of them don’t yeah um for me I I I switch to subjects I mean I’m

I prefer creative subjects as you know as you know um and I I switched to those subjects quite early on as early as possible where it was a lot of course work and less project based yeah sort of Yeah I mean you can tell by how we work now well I I think the planet you’ve sort of keyed onto an important point because after michael gary brought in his reforms in 2000 and there was 2016 [Music] there was this um collapse of course work essentially so um students had been assessed by more of a combination there was a lot more coursework and that kind of thing and then it changed into this

More of an exam based system and purely exam based system and I actually think that what needs to happen and what would be most helpful for employee employers so you know you’ve got to think at the end of the day A lot of these students that come in gaining their formal assessments looking to get a job eventually or do something in the workplace um I think that would be valuable to have a mixture of all through so have some that gauge the students Some form of assessment engages the students um which is more summative and you you take the teacher’s opinion into account um you know how hard the student’s been working throughout the year right because I I think the film fight

This happens with a lot of students say it to the last minute and mess around for a lot of the year and then well they they do well in the exam but then have they really learned anything from that right so this is the thing you know they learn how to jump through that hoop Yeah they learn to come through the exam poop but not through the poop of life essentially you know you’ve got to learn like I’m one student who’s a foundation student and he he got assessed in in this way And he was doing really well and and he’d improved a lot in his maths um and when he and then in teacher assessment he’s that kind of student who didn’t necessarily get on that well with

Teachers and they basically just gave him a they gave him a three um rather than you know I think he in terms of ability he was definitely on a on a four or five um there’s no way that He should have should have got a three but he didn’t he did say to his mum and his mom was talking to me a few months afterwards and said he has learned a lot from that experience because he’s realized that he does need to get on With his teacher and stuff a lot so he has learned learned from that you know from this instance but this is this is where I think we do something a bit different to school because we try to keep everything relaxed friendly but not like

Essentially not like a authority figure yeah and if you’ve got a child has a problem with authority with when they come to us yeah we help them get through and we teach them you know what they’re here to learn but it’s more of a friendship rather than a Yeah no yeah it’s a different sort of um dynamic you had a lot of cases of parents uh tall bribing teachers as it were as well I’ve read quite a lot about this um I don’t know where I’m also like a lot Of students have told me that you know parents are sort of writing to teachers quite often during you know during that period in order to sort of influence them in some way and you can’t have one um so this is this is where unless it’s

The same teacher marking the form the formal assessment yeah you’ve got that that’s one of the negative things if you’re say you are extroverted and you’re a people person yeah you’re more likely to get a higher grade than if you’re introverted and quiet in class and to be Honest a lot of a lot of students that were doing the g7 you know in the g60 year this year they were worried about a lot they’re worried about their teachers perception of them as a person Because yeah rather than yeah and that’s just not you you really want to avoid that so whilst I think there must be some place for this summative assessment like I’m sure there’s some way that it can be integrated in the

System um project work too I think um you can make a lot more of those um the qualifications a lot more interesting if some project work were integrated into it Um that has some kind of practical use outside of outside of school along with exams because I think all three have a purpose behind them but I understand that there are with Coursework you always get the problem of parents helping and that kind of thing and cheating uh yeah with um if you’re involved and I think it stops you learning what you’re meant to learn yeah one one thing that I did in school for

A level history was uh something called an individual assignment where you you can look into any figure um any historical figure that you choose and or or event or something like that You form a question you form your own question and that kind of thing um kind of like university actually and I think that kind of assessment has a huge place because um in our education system and We should try and integrate it into things like GCSEs and a levels because it’s it was a chance to first of all form your own question so you study something that you’re interested in

Um I think it was quite um well the way they did it was you did all the research and you took in a few notes in the exam um so it wasn’t entirely based on memory which I think is like not necessarily a Bad thing um but you’ve done all of your own research um and obviously because it was in the exam conditions as well like it was like a problem remember that’s on my head but I think it was like three hours or four hours we were writing Uh this long essay in um I think it sort of ticked all the boxes in the sense because you have that talk pressure as well of the time and that’s also something that you know I I wouldn’t say it’s the be all the

Handle like how well someone does under pressure but it is an indicator of you know how someone could do in time conditions um yeah so I think all forms of assessment you should be more integrated into so Um think about the process we go through when a new student signs up with us and the process we go through when a new tutor joins us so either side first thing we Do with the tutor look at the cv which is a formal thing it’s

Think of the student they come in they do a completely free trial session yeah in a class or we can have a summative you know we can kind of see how they work and then we do a formal informative assessment yeah and As I’m someone who always marks assessments and gives feedback there’s a lot you learn from both yeah so you learn completely different things from both of them in in a trial session or something like that or In the session itself and over a period of time you learn how the student learns and how they approach work how conscientious they are that kind of thing um you know their insecurities and and they’re there’s all

Weaknesses when it comes to interacting um you know how open they are with the teacher and that kind of thing and then you’re able to advise on the basis of that but if you carry out a formative assessment It can sometimes expose like how the child does under pressure how they cope with specifically worded questions and that kind of stuff and you cannot learn that just by carrying out one form of the assessment And I think that’s really really missing from a lot of our assessments these days so um jesus is una-level they’ve kind of they’ve made once they’ve made everything a lot more challenging

I think it is now just a tech you know it’s about how you perform on one day um the other thing you’ve heard that with the 11 plus and even the assessments during this week we’ve had people that can easily 80 85 without You know without the timing element of it yeah or the pressure and then we’ve had them do the assessments this week and it’s just not going well yeah like they have a bad day and I don’t think from having one bad day um We can make you know a judgment about how well I don’t think you can sort of say how confident someone is in that that subject or on the basis of the performance of one day remember when in the exam you see people

Marking the exam don’t know that person so that’s all they have to go on and whilst I’m maybe more objective I don’t necessarily think that objectivity is everything um because How how do we interact with people we always form opinions I think the teacher’s feedback is is relevant to that and how the student conducts themselves in the class is very relevant to how they conduct Themselves in life um so I would like to see in the future gavin williamson and or any other education secretary in the future I’d like to see a bit more creativity

When it comes to um designing assessments so without basing them purely on one exam or a set of exams that they do in a few days and during the year I’d rather see it spread out throughout you know the two Years um kind of like harry used to be but maybe with a few more um additional components but you can keep the challenging nature of them because I think that’s good so like GCSE Maps for instance is much harder than it would have been a few years ago and I think that’s a positive change but it’s interesting to see that other side to students not just how they perform in an exam that tells an employee an employer or

A university actually very little about the student and how they work um let’s end it there um you know we’ve kind of gone on for quite a while about this but you know it’s something that we feel

Conclusion

Quite passionately about and is very important um this will affect us for many years and I think it’s important to gauge and talk about things that are difficult to talk about so thank you For joining us and catch us next time [Music] you