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, the time they have had this academic year, their professional impression of learning that took place during lockdown and interaction levels between staff and student during school closure. 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 had instituted bubbles separating each year group, however these have been significantly reduced and are only re-instituted were we to need to respond to higher than average levels of Covid transmission. Students currently in Year 13 were able to access nearly all of the resources and equipment which they would in ‘standard’ years during Year 12.