UCAS Covid
Sir John Leman High School COVID-19 Information for University and College Admissions Teams
Sir John Leman High School is a Category 6 Opportunity Area school in rural, coastal Suffolk. Our Sixth Form is a flourishing provision serving a significant proportion of students that use the bus to get to school. As in all schools our students’ backgrounds are varied, however most of our students were presented with significant geographical isolation during the enforced school closure. The rural nature of our student population also presents issues with reliable Internet access, potentially restricting their ability to access their work via our platform Go4Schools and online lessons via MS Teams.
During the school closure students were given work to complete at home for every lesson and were given at least 2 1:1 sessions with their tutor on the MS Teams platform. Detailed monitoring of interaction between teaching staff and learners has been retained by the school at Key Stage 5 and these have been briefly referred to in individual UCAS Academic Statements where appropriate.
Due to the disruption to learning there has been less reliable data available to teaching staff for predicted grades. Staff have used the data that they had generated in the 7 months that students studied in school, their professional impression of learning that took place during lockdown, interaction levels between staff and student during lockdown and, finally, the work that students have completed in the short amount of time in the Autumn 2020 term. This is unavoidably less reliable than previous years however staff have also used their experience and professional understanding, these often being reliable indicators.
The school has now instituted bubbles separating each year group, with Year 13s being stationed and taught in an area separate from the rest of the school. Students are able to be off site during non-lesson time thus are responsible for appropriate use of their time during these periods.