Teachers and leaders supporting local communities

In this vlog, Farah Ahmed, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, founder and Director of Education at Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation and Fellow and Council members of the Chartered College of Teaching, and Sufian Sadiq, Director of Teaching School for Chiltern Learning Trust, specialist in quality assurance, assessment and examination, and Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching, explore how schools can support their local communities.

They discuss:

• How teachers and school leaders can use their existing resources to maintain relationships with their local communities, particularly those who might have restricted access to the internet or might find themselves in especially challenging circumstances due to the current crisis.
• Some of the biggest concerns and fears that have been voiced in their local school communities, especially around illness and bereavement in the family, and how teachers and school leaders can provide both moral and practical support.
• The effect of current restrictions on religious practices and gatherings and the resulting loss of support networks for students and their families.
• The consequences of school closures on the mental health and wellbeing of those students for whom school is a respite and challenges school leaders and teachers face around safeguarding.
• The necessity to consider potential long-term effects of school closures, particularly for the most vulnerable students.
• The opportunities school closures can bring for children with EAL to develop their home language and literacy skills, which have been shown to have a positive effect on majority language and literacy development, and for all students to discover new interests and alternative forms of learning. 

Unfortunately, due to current remote working arrangements some minor technical difficulties occurred during the recording of this vlog. As a result, there is a lower video and sound quality in this video. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.