Scotland’s national improvement agency for education has announced a range of additional resources to support parents and teachers with providing learning at home.

Education Scotland - which put inspection on hold exactly a week before Scottish schools closed in response to to the coronavirus pandemic - has said that supporting home learning must be “a collective effort” and has announced that it will:

• Ceate a resource bank of learning activities aimed at a variety of ages that will be updated on a weekly basis.
• Introduce a new weekly newsletter for parents with a range of learning activities.
• Introduce a new weekly newsletter for educators to share good practice.
• Deliver a range of webinars and support sessions for practitioners;
• Continue to develop and provide guidance on the effective use of Glow, Scotland’s digital learning platform. 

The body added that in the coming weeks it would be sharing more learning activities to support pupils in the senior phase.

Coronavirus: Support for learning at home

Education secretary John Swinney said the resources would “give parents access to a greater choice of high-quality, age-appropriate learning materials”.

Gayle Gorman, Scotland’s chief inspector of education and chief executive of Education Scotland, thanked parents for their “excellent work” and said the new package of support had been developed by engaging with teachers and staff with school-age children.

She added: “Whilst we recognise that it is difficult to learn when faced with such uncertainty and challenging circumstances, we want to ensure that as far as possible children and young people have access to a broad range of learning experiences during the school closures in term four and that they can continue to make progress.

“It is essential that both parents and practitioners receive the support they require to provide learning at home. Through our knowledge and experience of successful observed practice, we have developed a range of additional resources, which will complement the exceptional work already taking place across Scotland, with lots of ideas and suggestions to help parents and practitioners deliver learning activities suitable for a variety of ages.”