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Wharncliffe Side Primary School is a small school based in Sheffield. Students at the school are based in mixed year groups from EYFS to Year 6.
The school has been using EducationCity for 14 years now, and from May 2020 to May 2021, teachers and students there used EducationCity over 10,000 times.
Mr Matt Gaughan is the headteacher at the school and states that:
“We have used EducationCity for a number of years and have always been impressed with the quality and range of content on offer.”
In 2020, the school was partially closed due to the national lockdown. This brought about challenges for teachers and students in terms of how they were going to continue learning without mostly being in their brick-and-mortar school setting. Mr Gaughan states:
“The recent lockdown period brought many additional challenges for our staff, and EducationCity was an invaluable tool in helping us to adapt to this new way of working.”
During the partial school closures, the students had timetabled sessions each day to use EducationCity to support their learning. Throughout these sessions, parents commented that they were also able to help their child with their learning without teacher involvement as EducationCity takes you through instructions for concepts before moving on to questions and answers. Indeed, Mr Gaughan says that:
“The children were naturally motivated to use EducationCity due to its fun and interactive games. Having a timetabled slot during each day ensured the children knew when to go on it. It was also very useful that they would talk you through the instructions before an activity (this helped parents too!).”
Teachers were also able to use EducationCity during the partial school closures on a flexible basis. It allowed them to set work and change work whenever they needed to support children’s learning. Mr Gaughan expands on this: “Teachers were able to set a range of different activities and change them frequently; this helped keep the children engaged and ensured they kept returning to the platform.”
Of those teachers who were not as familiar with EducationCity, it also allowed them to provide learning activities for their class easily, and Mr Gaughan says that
“It is also very easy to use; staff with very little experience were able to manage the activities without any issues.”
EducationCity helped students with their focus and continued learning over the partial school closures, and many students would even use the learning program independently without any work being set. Mr Gaughan comments on this: “Parents and children reported how much they loved going on it – and many of the younger children, in particular, would sit for long periods of time accessing the activities.”
EducationCity looks forward to extending its 14-year partnership with Wharncliffe Side Primary School in the future, particularly with the school now moving back into a brick-and-mortar setting. They will both continue to work together to support the school in achieving its goals and aims to help all of its teachers and students succeed.