Oak National Academy has published a new end-of-term report detailing its findings after 4.7 million people accessed its online lessons during lockdown since April.

Here are six things it tells us about remote learning during the coronavirus school closures.

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1. Core subjects have been the most popular

The report reveals that at primary school level, users took part in just under 7 million English lessons and 6 million in maths.

For secondary school age pupils, science was the most popular, accounting for 29 per cent of all lessons taken. After English and maths, this was followed by French (8 per cent), geography (7 per cent), Spanish (6 per cent) and history (5 per cent).

Oak’s most accessed lesson was entitled ‘Area and Perimeter’ in Year 4 maths, which was accessed 243,000 times.

2. Quizzes can motivate and demotivate pupils

Feedback from parents and teachers said that well-designed quizzes helped to engage pupils. However, Oak was also told that when these quizzes were seen as too challenging, this could demotivate students.

On average, 79 per cent of quiz responses from primary school pupils were correct compared with 67 per cent across key stage 3 and KS4. 

3. Parents value seeing a teacher on the screen

The report found that parents valued seeing a teacher on screen and pupils’ ability to be able to engage with them.

It added: “One parent told us that their child was speaking to the screen as if the teachers were in the room with him.”

4. Some teachers use the lessons to reduce workload

A third of teachers said that their main motivation for using Oak was to help them manage their workload.

And 27 per cent said the main benefit was to improve the quality of teaching and learning they could offer during the lockdown.  Others highlighted that it helped to simplify planning or to better implement the curriculum.

5. Teachers want to know more about the impact of these remote lessons

Teachers were interested in better oversight of how actively pupils were engaging with the resources and understanding what they had learned.

Oak said this desire for more data has been a trade-off as it said “teachers and parents are also very keen on the ease of access that comes without logins or passwords, and with the need for privacy and data protection”.

6. Royalty draws a crowd 

Oak National Academy said that, on average, 220,000 users accessed its resources every day.

However, the report adds: “We noticed around 50,000 more users than we would usually expect on the day the Duchess of Cambridge gave an assembly.”