Hero photograph
 
Photo by Leoni Combrink

Getting Back to ‘Normal’ with Learning

Marie Stribling —

Great sighs of relief from students and staff were heard as we returned to face-to-face learning on Monday 18 May.

While there were certainly some challenges both for students and teachers with teaching and learning remotely, there were some big positives, such as an increase in everyone’s skills in working on the Outlook 365 Teams platform. It is probably fair to say, however, that for most people nothing replaces face-to-face contact, both inside and outside the classroom.

Our planning for the return to school has meant that the transition has gone smoothly. Our online survey of students towards the end of the lockdown period told us that lots of students were concerned that they had got behind with work and that they were worried about assessments they hadn’t finished or which they had missed.

However, teachers are very aware of these concerns and they are working to ensure that programmes, assessments and assessment deadlines are adjusted to give all students every opportunity to succeed, even though our time in face-to-face learning has been shortened. NZQA have also encouraged schools to use the flexibility that NCEA offers and they have provided information about how teachers might collect evidence towards standards differently than in previous years.

To give students a bit more learning time in Term 4, NZQA have pushed out the start of external exams from 6 November to 16th November. We have also adjusted how and when our practice exams will run this year. These practice exams were scheduled for three days in Week 8 of Term 3, with students being on exam leave during the exam period. However, these practice exams will now run in class times, with no exam leave for students. Most departments, other than Maths and Social Sciences, will now run practice exams in class time in Week 1 of Term 4. Maths and Social Sciences will run their exams in class time in Week 9 of Term 3.