Schools Going the Extra Mile in the Time of Covid-19

Photo credit: Whitgift School

Throughout all the upheaval of this year, it’s been a delight to hear about some of the brilliant ways schools have pulled together to support their local communities. At the height of Covid-19’s first wave in the spring, many schools and pupils rallied round to make PPE, ferried care-home workers to and from work, provided beds for key workers, helped coordinate food bank deliveries and shared online learning resources. ‘Despite the pandemic and enforced closures, the impact of schools collaborating in the interests of all pupils was clear to see,’ says Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council.

And now, as we head into a long, difficult winter amid a second national lockdown, schools are being forced to get creative once again. We’ve spoken to a handful of schools whose efforts have caught our eye to find out what lessons have been learned – and what good might come out of the pandemic.

Magdalen College School, Oxford

With its terrifically privileged position at the heart of one of the world’s leading universities, the area surrounding Magdalen College School doesn’t conjure up images of poverty – but it is in fact located in one of the most deprived postcodes in the country. The school’s community work is central to its vision and mission – and something it’s incredibly proud of.

The school has leapt on the use of technology to keep some of its more longstanding projects running throughout this year. The MCS-founded Oxford Festival of the Arts – a two-week extravaganza of workshops, concerts, recitals, masterclasses and art exhibitions – is usually the highlight on the school calendar. This year, the entire 18-day event went virtual – and to date, there have been nearly 14,000 views of the festival’s performances on YouTube and Facebook (the whole event can be watched again ).

At the beginning of 2019, MCS launched its Rose Hill Community Larder, a project coordinated and run by the school and the charity SOEFA (set up by an MCS alumnus), which collects excess or slightly damaged food from major supermarkets and redistributes it fairly. Pre-lockdown, the project ran not just as a food bank, but as a community hub too and a number of sixth-formers devoted their Tuesday afternoons to reading or playing with members’ children.

Manned almost exclusively by pupil and staff volunteers, the community larder has operated continuously throughout the pandemic – including at the very height of the first national lockdown, when it moved to a local community centre. ‘During lockdown, the larder continued to feed more than 100 families every single week,’ says Helen Pike, master of MCS. The project has recently secured funding from Oxford City Council – a significant endorsement for MCS’s work – meaning it can stay in situ for at least the next few years. ‘Lockdown has made us acutely aware of the level of need in certain areas of OX4,’ says deputy head Scott Crawford, ‘and we are determined to grow and develop our community larder to continue to provide targeted support.’

Whitgift School, Croydon

Diversity, charity and community programmes are part of the lifeblood of Whitgift – and at the beginning of the year the school appointed a dedicated director of partnerships and community, whose job it is to eventually get every single pupil actively involved in community service.

Whitgift has been running its Primary School Project for more than 20 years. In that time, it has welcomed more than 25,000 local pupils onto the school’s 45-acre campus for a week of computing lessons, alongside enrichment lessons in science, music, languages and sport. A full-time member of staff is employed to run and coordinate the scheme, and plans are being developed to increase the involvement of Whitgift pupils through mentoring and classroom assistant roles.

For obvious reasons, the project has been on hold this year – but Andy Marlow (who’s filled the new role) has been using the time out to focus on building further links with Croydon Council and local primary schools to help pinpoint the children who could benefit from this and other schemes the most. He’s also been developing other initiatives to increase the attainment and aspiration levels of local pupils.

This summer, as a direct result of the attainment gap caused by lockdown, Whitgift launched one of its biggest projects to date – a four-week summer school, planned and executed in a matter of weeks. Run in-person, but socially distanced, the school asked local headteachers to select pupils who had been most disadvantaged by lockdown, and Whitgift invited 140 Year 5 students from 22 different Croydon schools for lessons in the core subjects of maths, English and science (as well as a handful of other academic subjects), sport and fun group activities.

The main aim of the project was to enrich and stretch the pupils academically – but it worked wonders at building their social confidence back up too, after such an extended break from the classroom. ‘We wanted to use our amazing facilities, enthusiastic pupils and teachers willing to be involved during their long summer holidays to give something back to the community,’ says Mr Marlow. The summer school was part-funded by a clutch of donations from generous Whitgift parents, alongside a significant school contribution – which shows a real impetus to keep similar projects going in the long term.

Bancroft's School, Essex

Bancroft’s has been busy adapting its outreach programme to keep it running as well as it possibly can. ‘We always invited local secondary schools to our specialist lectures, and are currently sharing links with them to attend lectures remotely,’ says Lynne Hague, the school’s community development manager.

Following a pre-lockdown Law Day (which involved lectures at Queen Mary University of London and a mock trial at the Guildhall), the school has been mentoring local state-school students interested in applying for law at university – with remote practice interviews for Oxbridge being held over Zoom. Plans are also under way for a virtual universities fair, in partnership with five nearby state secondary schools.

Before Covid, Bancroft’s hosted and ran a weekly social club called Phab for disabled people – designed to help its members experience the same activities and opportunities as those without a disability. This is one of the many casualties of Covid; for many, the joy came from reducing social isolation and interacting with one another. However, the project hasn’t been completely forgotten – younger pupils have been making Christmas cards for the club’s members and an annual carol service usually performed at an almshouse in north London will be live streamed this year, so no one misses out.

King's College School, Wimbledon

At l, community outreach is a whole-school effort. In ‘normal’ times, almost 400 pupils and more than 50 members of staff are involved in local project work every Friday afternoon – with countless one-off events running throughout the academic year.

KCS has come up with new ways to keep its outreach projects going as visits to local care homes, mentoring schemes in partner special-needs and state schools and rehearsals for an annual community production are all temporarily on pause.

Pupils who usually visit a nearby care home have started a pen pal scheme to keep in contact with elderly residents over the second lockdown. Primary school partnerships have moved online, with children and staff holding Latin and English classes via Zoom. The school’s A-level bridging courses for Year 11 students – as well as elective courses for Year 11 and 13 – are being offered out to local schools. In doing so, far more children are benefiting from the schemes, with no cap on the number of pupils who can take part.

In August, King’s also hosted its own special summer school. Over the course of two weeks, 60 Year 10 pupils from local state schools visited for confidence-boosting catch-up lessons in English, maths and science following the prolonged gap in their schooling. The students made huge progress: the level of understanding in each GCSE subject increased from a low of 43 per cent in one subject to 83-95 per cent in all subjects by the end. One pupil commented: ‘It was nice to have the feeling of being back in school again.’

The Independent Schools Council's newly published booklet provides a brilliant snapshot of cross-sector partnership work between independent and state schools in the UK, despite the pressures of the pandemic. It's well worth a read.

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Schools Going the Extra Mile in the Time of Covid-19

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