with Karen Wespieser, curriculum lead for specialist content at Oak Academy
A couple of weeks ago a group of volunteer teachers, backed by the Department for Education, launched an online curriculum "Oak Academy" offering 180 lessons a week of structured video lessons for children. Oak had been put together in the space of just two weeks by teachers working remotely, as a direct response to the coronavirus crisis.
However, for families of children with SEND, there was one big problem - there was nothing differentiated or specialist for them. The criticism has been that it should have been inclusive from the start, factoring in the needs of children with SEND as it was developed, rather than being bolted on at the end. Others feel that criticism is unfair, given the volunteer nature of the enterprise and the speed with which it was created.
Nevertheless, Oak Academy's founders openly admitted it wasn't perfect and have responded to the criticism, working with special schools around the country. This week, their new SEND specialist curriculum is up and running. It still won't fulfil the needs of every child with SEND, as it's aimed at children and young people with more profound needs, including help for parents on writing their own social stories and basic numeracy concepts. It isn't offering, at the moment, differentiated learning some other children may require. And to be fair, schools themselves should be expected to be doing a lot of this work - they're the ones who know your child. In reality, some are doing an amazing job, but some are not doing as well.
Karen Wespieser, curriculum lead for specialist content at Oak Academy has written for SNJ today about what they've produced so far.
Our new specialist offer by Karen Wespieser, Oak Academy
The new Oak National Academy has, on the whole, been a success. Launched in haste by a team of volunteers with under two weeks’ preparation, it has been broadly welcomed by learners, teachers, and parents. Since the 20th April, over four million lessons have been accessed.
But Oak is not perfect, and nor does it claim to be. In his blog, Oak’s Director of Curriculum, David Thomas, shared how he wished he’d been able to launch an online classroom that was as inclusive as possible and included a specialist curriculum. So it is fantastic that just 14 days later we are launching our first week of specialist content.
There is much to be celebrated; our team of volunteer teachers and leaders have achieved a massive amount whilst in many cases, simultaneously running their own schools. However, like David we want to avoid hubris and talk about what’s wrong with our specialist offer.
Rapid improvements for accessibility
It is not a coincidence that Oak’s logo is an acorn. We are starting small and growing quickly. In just three weeks, much has changed. A comprehensive and honest accessibility audit has led to rapid improvements in the site, including nearly all lessons being subtitled and lessons for the lower age groups available in British Sign Language. Most significant though is the addition of over 30 lessons specifically made for learners who normally receive their education in specialist settings.
We’re starting with four subject areas - language and communication, numeracy, independent living, and creative arts. We also have a therapeutic offer, which this week comprises three speech and language sessions. These will be expanded in future weeks to include physical therapy and occupational therapy.
We have consulted as much as we can in the time available. The subject areas are all delivered by different specialist schools and as a result, represent the diversity of our sector. We have also been advised by experts including Margaret Mulholland, Anne Heavey, Susan Douglas and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. We have spoken to parents (including SNJ) and we look forward to hearing feedback from learners over the coming week.
Yet despite this wealth of expertise volunteering to help, deciding what and how to teach in the specialist curriculum has been a massive challenge, and not one that we are sure we have got completely right, yet.
1. We can’t be everything to everyone
The non-mainstream sector, and the learners it supports, is amazingly diverse. We had to be realistic about what we could achieve. Put simply, we knew that we could not do everything for everyone. We had to make some tough decisions and work within our volunteers’ capacity.
We decided to target our support at the area where we felt there was the biggest gap in online lessons and resources - SLD and MLD schools. But this means that other areas are not covered. Increasing this coverage, and increasing the inclusiveness of the Oak primary and secondary content, is an area we know that we need to continue developing.
2. We have struggled to find a common language
We wanted our lessons to be suitable for a range of abilities, and we needed to be able to explain which age, development or phase, lessons were aimed at. There is no common language for this across the sector; each school arranges it the way that suits their community best. In the end we settled on three starting points for our lessons: Early Development, Building Understanding and Applying Learning.
As we produced the first lessons, it also became clear that our Communication and Language lessons would also benefit from age-related options – so each lesson has a “primary” or “secondary” element (even though we know that this isn’t always a relevant distinction in our sector). We have done our best to create a coherent offer but we have worked at pace and recognise there are compromises and we need to continue to refine our approach.
3. We can’t replicate what specialist schools do best
Specialist schools pride themselves on their in-depth knowledge of their learners and their families. Their provision is based around individuals and relationships. No online, off-the-shelf support is ever going to be able to do that.
Oak is not trying to replace any school; we don’t have relationships with children, and it would make no sense to pretend we are more than what we are. We are not in children’s communities and we don’t know their situations. Our hope is that through these lessons, we can make life a little bit easier for teachers and free up time for them to continue their support for their pupils.
4. We aren’t going to change the world
As David explained when Oak launched three weeks ago, we’ve come to expect that any new thing, especially any new thing that involves technology, believes it’s going to change the world. Every tech unicorn has a mission statement about revolutionising things. Oak won’t change the world. Especially not when it’s been built in a matter of weeks. It’s not supposed to revolutionise teaching. We just want to make life a little bit easier during one of the most difficult periods in our lifetimes. If we can do that, then that’s a big win.
Find Oak Academy here | the specialist curriculum here | Oak on Facebook | Oak on Twitter
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Also read:
- Distance education resources for children and young people with SEND
- Mum’s brilliant home education helped me thrive as an autistic student
- Campaign: Family carers deserve at least minimum wage for their 24/7 work
- All our coronavirus content here
- How is the coronavirus lockdown affecting the mental health of children with SEND?
- SEND children are being “traumatised” by not getting the help they need in schools
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Tania is an experienced broadcast and print journalist & author. She also runs a PR, web & social media consultancy, SocialOro Media.
Tania is a rare disease & chronic pain patient advocate with Ehlers Danlos syndrome.
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I don’t think it’s a question of ‘wrong’ so much as using it as an ideas bank rather than slavishly following it. I home educated my pair of high functioning autistics from age 5 through to A level (my daughter’s article is in the resources at the end of this piece) and I have 3 pieces of advice that I gained the hard way.
1) Get the basics right before you try to build. This could be an ideal time to really focus on handwriting, number bonds, times tables, sentence and paragraph structure and all those sorts of things.
2) Some days, learning just doesn’t happen. On those days, find some good documentaries or audio books, do some cooking, sow some seeds. We’re asking a lot of our kids at the moment, and of ourselves as well so we need to be kind. And that means adding chocolate or wine to your shopping list and recognising that you didn’t want this job, you don’t feel as if you can do it and sometimes, it’s way too much and you think you’ll go mad if you can’t escape… and you can’t escape in lockdown. Somehow, I don’t think my pair are the only ones who can pick up on my tension and either feel it themselves or sense an opportunity to wind me up and avoid doing things. Spoil their fun. Do something to make YOURSELF happy. I know it’s a radical idea, but I think it should catch on.
3) There is absolutely nothing wrong with what I thought of as ‘parking activities.’ Assuming 5 hours teaching per day, each child in a class would get 10 minutes of 1 to 1 if there was no actual teaching. Working 1:1 is pretty intense for child and parent, so you don’t need that much of it. My ‘parking’ activities were online maths and spelling games, documentaries and audio books. Amazon have some free ones available at the moment and there’s some good stuff on BBC Sounds.
And finally, and I really hope I’m wrong about this, do a spot of expectation managing. They’ve varied the EHCP legislation so LA’s don’t have to provide what’s in the EHCP and I suspect that the ‘staged return’ will have those with SEND at the end of the queue to go back. In a way, it makes sense, because our kids are the least flexible and need the most support, and a lot of them won’t be safe in school.