• On Outdoor Classroom Day (Thursday 23 May 2024) the National Education Nature Park programme is calling on teachers and pupils to discover habitats in their school, nursery or college grounds.
• You’ll follow prompts to find what homes for wildlife you have on your learning site, and upload your findings to see the different types of spaces that are being found across the country on this day.
• By taking part in this England-wide, curriculum-linked activity, you and your class will be ready to start creating a map of habitats on your learning site – an essential first step in the Nature Park process.

Calling all teachers and young people! Take your learning outside and be a ‘habitat hero’ this Outdoor Classroom Day – finding habitats on your school grounds as part of the National Education Nature Park programme.

By taking part in this nationwide, curriculum-linked Habitat Heroes activity, you and your learners will follow prompts to explore the homes for wildlife you have on your learning site – perhaps you have piles of leaves where worms could hide, fence panels that spiders might use for spinning webs, or pools of water where frogs and birds could go for a dip!

You’ll upload your findings and see your discoveries alongside all of the other spaces being explored in schools, nurseries, and colleges across the country on this day. This activity forms part of the trailblazing National Education Nature Park, led by the Natural History Museum working with the Royal Horticultural Society and other partners, and commissioned by the Department for Education as part of their Climate Change and Sustainability Strategy. The free Nature Park programme – which launched in October 2023 and over 2000 schools, colleges and nurseries have joined so far – sees young people leading the way in forming a vast network of green spaces by improving their schools, colleges and nurseries for both people and wildlife, all while connecting to nature and
developing vital skills for their futures.

“Whether you’ve already joined the Nature Park or not, taking part in Habitat Heroes on 23 May is the perfect way to take your learning outside this Outdoor Classroom Day, spend time in nature and see the positive impact we can have when we all work together,” says Dr Jessica Tipton, Head of the National Education Nature Park at the Natural History Museum.

The Habitat Heroes activity is a great way to start your Nature Park journey and explore the concept of what habitats are. It will prepare you and your class for the mapping your site activities, an essential first step in the Nature Park five-step process where you will explore habitats in more detail, surveying the different types of habitat you have across your site and recording these on the Nature Park map. You can then journey through the Nature Park process and turn ‘grey’ parts of your outdoor space – such as concrete playgrounds – into greener spaces by making scientifically evidence-based changes. Options range from growing pollinator-friendly plants and building small ponds, to greening walls with climbing plants and harvesting rainwater.

“We’re so excited to see what homes for wildlife pupils discover on their sites,” says Rosie Naylor, Senior Programme Developer at the Royal Horticultural Society. “We hope this activity will just be the beginning of pupils connecting to nature, developing new skills and transforming their spaces into sanctuaries for both nature and their school community through the Nature Park programme”.

The Nature Park links with other parts of the Department for Education’s Climate Change and Sustainability Strategy and its funded initiatives; including on the ground support for climate action planning from Climate Ambassadors (delivered by the University of Reading, EAUC and STEM Learning), and a Sustainability Support for Education digital hub of resources and tools launching soon. The hub will support schools by bringing together all the information they will need to develop, or build on, their climate action plan.

Minister for the School System and Student Finance at the Department for Education, Baroness Barran says:

“We are thrilled to see schools across the country accessing joining the National Education Nature Park to help pupils learn outdoors, engage with the natural world and to create and protect green spaces within their education settings.

“The Nature Park is one of the key initiatives commissioned by Department for Education as part of our Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy. It will support young people to connect with nature in ways that will develop vital skills for their futures while making meaningful improvements to biodiversity within their local environments for a more sustainable future.”

The more schools that take part, the bigger impact we will have! Get involved and find out more at www.educationnaturepark.org.uk/habitat-hero

What began as a project to minimize lesson disruption by video enabling essential physical learning spaces and expanding the use of Zoom to on-premise, soon evolved once both students and teachers adapted to the new hybrid world. Not only did RCA need to provide easy to use and intuitive room set-ups, but they also needed solutions that could be versatile for the diverse user needs within the college.

Alex Watt, IT Services Manager at the Royal College of Art explains that the RCA is “an ever-moving environment; meeting rooms become teaching spaces, which become open plan office spaces, which become studio spaces on a six-monthly basis. With every new term, there’s a new wall taken up or put down, so one of the keys was that it was a flexible system that could be quite easily moved if it needed to be.”

Following the successful trial of 1, which progressed to 10 devices, Strive AV and DTEN supported the RCA with a complete roll out of over 120+ Zoom-enabled spaces which include DTEN D7 All-in-one video conferencing and collaboration devices, mounted on mobile carts to deliver true flexibility.

Watt continues “Whether it’s testament to the hardware that’s in the device, or the integration with Zoom, but they’re very forgiving on a wireless connection. That actually makes the DTEN D7s incredibly useful as they can be pretty much rolled into any space where we’ve got a half-decent WiFi connection and they just work, and they can also be used in a more creative way.”

Watch the full story here.

Since the DTEN deployment, the Royal College of Art has seen many benefits. It’s been able to provide its academics with a flexible teaching solution where they can learn in person and remotely. Ahead of the pandemic this hybrid approach wasn’t an option which means they have now attracted a more geographically dispersed student body.

The legacy fixed solutions such as projectors and screens in a traditional education environment have been replaced to support modern teaching methods. Where there is flexible seating throughout the campuses, there is now flexible technology too which allows technology to be utilised more effectively.

The RCA have also managed to save resources on device management. James King, Head of IT at Royal College of Art explains “The amount of resources we put into supporting the units has dropped dramatically as they are self-service; people are very happy to walk into a room, find one, log in and start their work. That has led to an increase in satisfaction across our user base.”

Overall, the Royal College of Art has achieved its aims of a flexible, user-friendly solution that will not only ensure students have the best possible learning experience but that will add value to its teaching environments.

Maisha Mema’s vision is “to create a conducive environment for the children in the program through learning and activities so that they will be brought up to be useful citizens of Kenya in terms of getting an education and a job.”

Michael Kyavoa, Teacher, Maisha Mema, explains: “We have worked with Whizz Education since 2016 for our children to access the award-winning virtual tutor Maths-Whizz.  Currently, we have 113 licences, so children, mainly from Play Group to Grade 5 (6-14 years), use Maths-Whizz on a regular basis, funded by St. Olav VGS in Stavanger, Norway, whose generous contribution also covers our WiFi.

“All beneficiaries of Maisha Mema attend public school during the day. When they return in the afternoons, we then work with them to ensure they understood their lessons and anywhere where they found challenges, can be set on Maths-Whizz.  This reinforces learning and really helps build confidence when they are in school.”

90% of Maisha Mema’s students who made 2.5 progressions or more, since the beginning of the academic year, have achieved accelerated progress. 

“Our Whizz Education Success Partner, Matt Jones has been incredible.  He has provided several meeting and training sessions with all of our staff over zoom. He is always available to help and answer any questions.

“One area we have found most helpful is that Maths-Whizz enables us to monitor the progress of each child and groups of learners too.  This is a good point of reference for our teachers.  Every teacher has their own password and log in to access detailed information.  This enables us to drill down into subtopics so we can clearly assess strengths and weaknesses.  The data empowers us as teachers to step in and support individuals, groups of learners or a whole class on a particular topic.  In this way it helps guide our lesson planning on a daily basis.

“The Teachers Resource aspect of the solution is also very helpful.  This is a library and tool containing lesson plans and guides which we can use to plan lessons on specific topics.

“The virtual tutor itself is really well received by the children.  They love the games, animals and animation, and genuinely enjoy working through the programme.  It means there is not a ‘formal’ classroom feeling and learners are active in making progress by themselves.   One of the best aspects of Maths-Whizz is that it pitches the learning at the level of the individual child.  It automatically assesses and tailors online lessons to match knowledge and ability.  We often use it to recap on our normal lessons and yet, everyone is working at their own level and pace.

“Because we use an English version of Maths-Whizz, incidentally, we have found this helps children with their English too!   As well as reading, the sounds help them with their pronunciation.

“Following the COVID lockdown, we were allowed to let five children at a time access our Maths-Whizz room although we still couldn’t teach.   This helped them keep up to date with their maths learning as much as they possibly could given the circumstances.

“Maths-Whizz is now helping us prepare students’ learning for the new CBC curriculum which has been introduced, as they eventually work towards a new national exam when they reach Grade 6.

“Overall, working with Whizz Education and being able to access the virtual tutor Maths-Whizz has helped our learners so much.  Ultimately, the knowledge they have acquired will help our children get jobs in the future and improve their life outcomes.”

If you would like to sponsor or donate to Maisha Mema please visit: www.maishamema.org

For further information about Whizz Education please see:  www.whizz.com

“Spaces Learning is like a textbook that I use to deliver the content, which instead of being words on a page, is hands-on experiential courses. It’s a much better experience and I firmly believes using Spaces Learning has made me a better teacher 50 times over,” says Professor Feltus.

Toolwire Spaces Learning is a workstream collaboration platform that combines asynchronous digital learning (allowing students to view coursework at any time) with synchronous video conferencing and collaboration tools (where students are required to login and participate at a specific time) to create a virtual classroom. Using it, Professor Feltus and his students find that they communicate more frequently and effectively. No longer do students sit through lectures where some may get away with hiding in the back and not contributing. Thanks to Spaces Learning, they now engage and interact through discussion boards, logging-in when and where they want to ask a question or answer one. Students have started teaching and helping each other, collaborating, and moving forwards together.

One-on-one mentoring between teacher and student is still important, and thanks to its inbuilt analytics capability, Professor Feltus benefits from actionable insights he can draw from Spaces Learning. Using this, the Professor can see who has not been logging-on very often and might need additional help – something he might have missed in a physical classroom. The platform can also be set up to perform automated ‘nudging’ of students to catch-up with coursework, which gets better results than traditional methods.

“With Spaces Learning, I get fine-grained detail which lets me see how students are doing. Because I can see what is going on, I am better positioned to help and students can share their screens to show me exactly what they are doing,” says Professor Feltus.

Since autumn 2021, students and faculty have been required to physically return to the classroom, but Professor Feltus will never go back to full time face-to-face teaching. His classes will now be a hybrid of Spaces Learning and face-to-face, as for him, using Spaces Learning enables a teaching style like the modern Socratic method. Because students can access and review all the content on the platform whenever they want to, they start thinking and coming up with ideas, which means classes are used to go over those ideas and have the discussion that needs to be had that day instead of dryly going over coursework.

The pandemic taught us many lessons about the everyday activities we took for granted. Education is complex and what works for one group may not work for others. For further information and to request a one-to-one demo click here.

The Education Resources Awards, organised by Brilliant Marketing Solutions and the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA), highlight the quality and diversity of educational products and resources, excellent educational establishments and the most dedicated members of the teaching profession and supplier industry, all working together to encourage the very best in education.

Emma Ringe, Schools Director, Whizz Education explains: “Wow, to be shortlisted for three ERA awards is a huge achievement for our team!  We are particularly proud that our work has been recognised in association with Roskear Primary School in the Collaboration with a School category, as the teachers and students have made excellent progress in maths.

“We began work with Roskear Primary school in Cornwall early in 2019 with the objective of accelerating progress of lower attaining pupils through the mathematics curriculum, resulting in an increase of pupils achieving age-related progress expectations within teacher assessment.

“Whizz Education now delivers an innovative menu of services – including planning, training, assessment and reporting, live impact data, course correction plus access to our virtual tutor Maths-Whizz – to improve learning outcomes in maths and drive-up standards of attainment, all tailored to the needs of Roskear.”

So far, this academic year, over 90% of Roskear pupils who used Maths-Whizz for 50 minutes or more have made accelerated progress on their maths-age.

Jess Morris-Marsham Maths Leader, Team Leader for Years 3 and 4 and Year 5 Teacher Roskear Primary School stated: “Our most recent assessments identified the Year 2 pupils who were below ARE in the autumn due to learning loss following COVID.  Following the after-school interventions where children used the virtual tutor Maths-Whizz for two hours per week, plus their weekly lesson in class, each one of those children had reached ARE within six weeks.

“Working with Whizz Education to help our students improve learning outcomes has been extremely rewarding.  We are delighted to have been nominated for this important award which recognises the great progress of our pupils across the full range of abilities.”

The winners of the Education Resource Awards will be announced at an event at The National Conference Centre Birmingham on 6th May 2022.

For further information about The Education Resource Awards please see: www.educationresourcesawards.co.uk and for Whizz Education please see: www.whizz.com

A recent independent evaluation by the NSPCC confirmed an ongoing need for Speak out Stay safe (SOSS). Whilst most primary children have a good understanding of what abusive behaviour looks like and which trusted adults they can speak to, the children’s charity safeguarding programme is designed to boost schools’ relationships and sex education (RSE) teaching. Headteacher Sarah Oliver from Rowledge C of E Primary in Farnham shares how her pupils have engaged with the online assembly.

My sixth year in post also marks the sixth year we’ve rolled out the Speak out Stay safe (SOSS) programme. At Rowledge C of E Primary we feel incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to have the NSPCC in to speak with our children. Tapping into their expertise and resources has been hugely beneficial in enabling our pupils to understand abuse in all its forms. Their team made the initial outreach and the process of bringing them into the school was seamless. More recently due to COVID-19 restrictions we’ve taken advantage of their brilliant online assembly.

Just this term we ran our first online offering with our children to support them in feeling empowered – knowing how they can speak out and stay safe with the support of classroom resources. Making sure that pupils then have sufficient time to reflect on these sessions is a key priority for our teachers. Tapping into thought books that they use every morning, pupils are encouraged to write down any thoughts or feelings that they may want to share with their teacher. Having this tool available means they really took the content of the assembly seriously.

The SOSS online assembly is well-made, and the introduction of Ant and Dec is genius. The children absolutely love them, and it makes the film very current. With the programme’s goal of ensuring children know how to access support, if they need it, it wouldn’t be everyone who can deliver such difficult content. However, Ant and Dec and their co-presenter manage it with just the right level of sensitivity. At primary level if you don’t grab the pupils’ attention from the get-go you’ve lost them before you’ve even begun. So, the delivery being engaging and entertaining without trivialising the seriousness of the topic means the children really want to listen.

One of the pupils’ main takeaways from SOSS is that they are supported in telling someone if they think there’s a problem. Teachers encourage students to critically think about if something doesn’t feel right and listen to any butterflies in their tummy which might indicate that they need to confide in someone. From experience we know that a child is more likely to first disclose to a close friend than an adult, especially if they feel the grown-ups in their life are too busy. So, leveraging the NSPCC’s content, we have also developed extra materials around keeping friends safe.

It’s likely a friend may not know what to do or where to go with such information. As such we’re aiming to upskill the children as to next steps if they heard something that makes them uncomfortable. On top of my role, I am working with the Hampshire Safeguarding Children Partnership (HSCP) which prioritises keeping young people safe and ensuring their wellbeing in the local area. One of our focuses is how children can keep their friends safe, so collectively with the NSPCC’s resources, we’ve spearheaded the idea of upskilling into Rowledge’s classrooms. The overarching message we are trying to put across is that it is okay to talk. However big or small the problem is, there are adults they can approach who are available to listen and help.

SOSS has also helped support our safeguarding duties while linking directly to the curriculum. Working in the education sector you’re often told to deliver a subject but aren’t given the right resources to do so. For example, when it comes to PHSE subjects such as abuse or sex education, teachers naturally worry about getting it right. It’s critical that resources can either be delivered by external organisations or are made available for teachers, so SOSS is pivotal for tackling an issue that’s close to my heart. Other NSPCC resources such as Talk PANTS have been invaluable. With the help of the friendly dinosaur Pantosaurus, children understand that their body belongs to them, and they should tell someone they trust if anything worries them.

Given that some of the abuse that can be experienced as you get older isn’t always obvious, the impact of nuances in relationships is important for pupils to be aware of early on. Despite the sensitive nature of the topic the SOSS online assembly manages it superbly. Not shying away from difficult subject matters and approaching them in a way that is accessible for children is crucial, so they’ve really hit the nail on the head in my eyes. Available to every primary school at no cost I’d highly recommend SOSS to all. Unless you’re specifically teaching this in your own way, and you have a clear programme of study it should be 100% compulsory. It’s a non-negotiable that children know that abuse is never their fault and that they have the right to be safe.

Interested in the NSPCC’s online safeguarding programme? Receive their online assembly and supporting resources to use in your classroom discussions by signing up your primary school today.

What’s changing when it comes to new technologies in education?

Remote learning is something that students, teachers, faculty, and staff are really starting to embrace. But unlike businesses that can apply security policies to their own workforce’s devices, the education sector does not have this option as Bring Your Own Device is the norm for further education students. Therefore, collaboration solutions with a high level of security are of paramount importance.

Schools, colleges, and universities are learning that the right digital tools can go a long way in helping navigate online educational environments when required. Digital communications – particularly cloud-based communications – are being adopted to support teacher and student practices from anywhere, anytime, on any device.

Are the changes all in the classroom?

The chance of a great digital experience is certainly not limited to the classroom. Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral makes it possible to connect your entire institution with a single app. This means that admins, headteachers and IT, for instance, can keep in contact with everyone on campus without switching screens making it easy to meet with department heads, faculty and staff, students, parents or IT at any time, and from anywhere using a phone, PC or tablet. From an IT point of view, Avaya Cloud Office is easy to implement for all users without lengthy training and constant interface questions. In addition, compliance and security is built in.

Is the purchasing behaviour of schools, colleges and universities changing? How?

As with the market overall, we see a shift from CapEx based investments periodically to more services based, OpenX expenditures – which can present some budgeting challenges in the short term as education establishments make that transition. The appetite to move to a SaaS model though is clear, as are the numerous benefits. Within our own customer base, Avaya is seeing significant uptake of the overall Avaya OneCloud proposition to help this migration from on-premises to cloud at their own pace.

Are there any regulations or projects education providers should be aware of?

Data security is absolutely key and will become increasingly important as the education sector reviews the “freemium” solutions that may have acted as a “sticking plaster” during the initial need for remote learning. Just as GDPR is a key concern of the private sector, we will see an increased focus within the education sector and most likely further consolidation of services to limit the number of solutions that potentially have access to school and student data. All-in-one solutions that allow educational organisations to streamline data sharing and limit the number of online storage spaces within their networks will become increasingly desirable.

We enjoyed the John Wallis Academy customer story in last month’s edition. Does Avaya have other education customers?

We have an excellent customer base within the education sector from small schools and larger academy trusts, through to colleges and universities. To-date many of these customers experience benefits from the reliable solutions that our on-premises and private cloud portfolio provides and increasingly these establishments are now looking to move more of their services to the cloud. Traditional communications for schools are telephone and email but cloud based UCaaS is a secure and compliant way for schools to integrate multiple communications methods through a single cloud provider. For our customers, the Avaya OneCloud solutions provide the flexibility that they need.

What trends are on the horizon?

The evolution of teaching strategies is set to continue with an ongoing drive towards blended learning. For schools to deliver the best online learning experiences possible, they need to create and deliver memorable experiences, which can be done by assembling and combining different education apps and capabilities to achieve the outcomes a teacher and school need at any one time.

Furthermore, as we have seen in the corporate world, the increase of gamification in eLearning is set to continue to increase motivation and overall engagement. We know that, almost at a moment’s notice, students and teachers might find themselves collaborating remotely and therefore the ongoing adoption of secure, scalable solutions such as Avaya Cloud Office will continue to grow.

Why is the education sector of particular importance to Avaya?

In addition to our existing install base of customers in this sector, we noticed an increased “cry for help” at the beginning of lockdown restrictions in the UK. At that time, Avaya provided free-of-charge remote working licenses and free conferencing and collaboration to all existing customers and education establishments. The uptake of this offer was unprecedented across schools, academies and larger colleges and universities.

Avaya is totally focused on delivering experiences that matter – and in today’s education sector, that experience has to encompass students, parents and staff. Avaya’s passion to deliver this total experience ensures that we align to the most important facets and principles that are of paramount importance to the UK’s educations establishments.

To learn how your school, college or university can benefit from creating better communications experiences, visit https://www.avaya.com

One of the few positive outcomes from this pandemic experience is the opportunity to rethink the tools we use to communicate and what could be possible if all the separate siloed pieces of technology worked together in an integrated and holistic way. Ask yourself just how many apps you’ve been using? Probably one for video meetings, another for messaging and at least one specialist education app.

One app for everything

Advances in technology are ushering in a revolution against centuries-old protocols. For education institutions today, communication isn’t simply about a phone system. For some, the priority is to be able to connect an entire school across multiple dispersed locations, helping to create a cohesive campus. For others, it’s about simplifying the communications experience with an all-in-one communications solution – calling, messaging, audio and video conferencing, screen-sharing, task management, presence and more, with all files and communications kept in one secure place that can be accessed anywhere, anytime, using any device all through a single app.

Unified communications in the cloud

Cloud-based Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) is a secure and compliant way for schools to integrate multiple communications methods through a single cloud provider. From just one interface, it’s simple to coordinate with colleagues and instantaneously communicate with the whole school as well as parents and staff. A UCaaS system enables easy collaboration with faculty via calls, private or group chats, or in the same virtual room via an app or browser. Events run more smoothly thanks to file sharing and management tools that make it easy to create, assign, and manage any task. Teachers and admin staff can monitor everything through built-in-analytics and tailored dashboards to track things like equipment spending and inventory or use built-in reports to track budgets. UCaaS also allows for the creation of individualised learning programmes and provides for changing needs as well as making life easier for IT admins.

John Wallis Academy

Based in Ashford, Kent, The John Wallis Church of England Academy is a mixed school, from nursery to sixth form, where the legacy desk-phone system had run its course. With multiple buildings located on the Ashford site, the new communications system needed to help create a virtual campus as well as simplify all the different technologies that were being used.

The Academy was assisted in its search for a communication technology partner by Red Rose Technologies, which understood its requirements, did the research, and provided options, working closely with all parties to make sure the project met the functionality, budget and performance needs of the Academy. Red Rose’s role benefitted John Wallis Academy as the supplier marketplace is busy and over-crowed. It takes time and effort to root out the noise and non-applicable suppliers, which the school does not have. Red Rose believed that Avaya was one of the standout vendors due to its demonstrated history supporting the education community and the fact that when the school needed service and support, they could deal directly with the technology vendor, meaning only one number to call for support 24/7/365.

Matthew Connolly, Data & Systems Manager at John Wallis Academy said: “We decided to go for a UCaaS solution after our own initial research indicated that our existing system was struggling to meet the demands of the Academy. After reviewing several options, Avaya were by far the best provider, delivering a simple, self-administered platform that incorporates the latest communication technologies. We can now manage our users, call queues, groups, and hardware allocation from a single website. Not only are we saving time using features such as automatic voice mail transcription and the ability to access anyone, anywhere, through the excellent softphone application allowing staff to connect to each other the way they want on the device they want, but we are actually saving money against our previous solution.”

Creating better communications experiences matters more than ever, so visit Avaya to learn how unified, cloud-based digital communication technologies can benefit your school.

Mamu Alhaji Muhammad, Chairman, Rafbonee STEM Child Care Academy explains: “We first came across Whizz Education at the GESS conference in Dubai in 2020, just weeks before COVID hit and schools closed. We’d looked at various technology solutions to help support our teaching of maths. However, we chose to work with Whizz Education and its award-winning virtual tutor Maths-Whizz because of the user-friendly nature of the platform, which is especially designed for children, adapting to their individual pace of learning plus the extended support and resources the company provide.

“The team at Whizz Education has been great to work with. Jean-Francois Lucas worked closely with us – albeit remotely due to the lockdowns – so we could get up and running with the entire programme despite the COVID challenges.”

Jean-Francois Lucas, Managing Director International schools at Whizz Education explains: “Initially and understandably there were challenges with planning, training and implementing the Maths-Whizz solution during the height of the pandemic. The school was closed during the lockdowns and with international travel prevented, all training and support provided was necessarily remote. However, the commitment and dedication of the teaching staff prevailed and given the economic pressures experienced in Nigeria where the currency suffered a significant devaluation which led to rioting and civil unrest, the resulting achievements by students, supported by the school’s dedicated staff have been all the more remarkable.

“Rafbonee STEM Care was named as one of Whizz Education’s 14 distinguished schools for 2021. Distinguished schools demonstrate outstanding progress and accelerated learning in maths, where students have passed a minimum of three progressions each week over the course of the academic year. Students achieve progressions through quality learning time spent using the virtual Maths-Whizz tutor. Progress is tracked in real-time and learning gains quantified by an increase in Maths Age (Whizz Education’s Maths Age is like the better-known ‘Reading Age’; it measures your child’s maths’ ability against the level we’d expect of an average student of their age). Where consistent improvement has been shown across a group of students, the school is awarded distinguished school status.”

Mr Adebisi Rasaq Ayobami, Superintendent Rafbonee STEM Child Care Academy explains: “Online learning suddenly became even more important during the pandemic. We wanted to ensure COVID was not a barrier to learning and Whizz Education has helped us achieve this for the benefit of our students. Initially our pupils used the virtual tutor at home, then when students returned to school, we incorporated regular access into our timetable and a wider roll-out. As a result, in contrast to many students around the world experiencing learning loss during the pandemic, our pupils were able to make continued learning gains.”

Graph showing the increase in average maths age for students at Rafbonee STEM Child Care Academy between 15 February 2021 to 31 October 2021 despite the Covid challenges

Mr Ayo continues: “Maths can naturally be a subject which some children (and many adults!) find challenging, but the virtual tutor is engaging, encouraging and rewarding. It makes maths interesting and fun! Children are motivated by their success to work through the lessons which Maths-Whizz automatically adapts to their ability. Rewards offered through medals and certificates mean we can decorate students who perform well and because achievement is based on progress rather than ability everyone can benefit. We teach maths every day at Rafbonee and for us, Maths-Whizz has really started to help children achieve results.

“Whizz Education arranged several remote training sessions to ensure we get the most out of the system. The support from the Whizz team has been incredible. If we need any help, our day-to-day contact and education success partner Aileen Madayag, is always ready to help. Nothing is ever too much trouble.

“The platform itself is designed in a user-friendly way and the information presented is crystal clear, making it is easy to see data on results and topics. Children’s strengths and weaknesses are identified, and we can advise a child if they should use the Topic Focus function to work more on a particular area of maths. It means every child can make good progress.“Maths-Whizz is also particularly useful to check ahead on topics. So, for example if we know next week we will teach fractions, we can use the Topic Focus function to introduce children to the subject beforehand. Our feedback from teachers has been very positive: the solution really helps them embed understanding and knowledge.”

Mamu Alhaji Muhammad confirms. “The programme provides an excellent teacher resource and has enabled us to increase the level of maths competency among our pupils. For us, working with Whizz Education has encouraged our students to develop a real curiosity and interest in maths, free from any maths anxiety. This is essential for us as a school where STEM education is our priority. For our parents, it has allowed them and us to monitor progress of children, so we are easily able to assess critical success factors. In the background, we are supported by the team at Whizz Education who are completely invested in our students’ success, and we have developed a true partnership for the benefit of improved educational outcomes at our school.

“We are honoured to now be named as one of Whizz Education’s distinguished schools.”

For further information please see: www.whizz.com