Four schools in Oxfordshire make up the OPEN Academy Trust. Those four schools are Cholsey Primary School, Ladygrove Park Primary School, St. John's School, and Willowcroft Community School.
“The Ombea smileys are a light-touch way of getting chatty, honest feedback.”
Jane Hemery, Headteacher at Willowcroft Community Primary School
The global pandemic has compelled schools to rethink teaching and learning. Traditional in-class lessons have been replaced by online remote learning all over the world, as teachers are forced to make the switch.
No group has found this easy, but the challenges are particularly acute in primary schools for numerous reasons: Younger children lack the skills and dexterity to engage remotely; Homes aren't necessarily set up for optimal comfort when using a screen, and schools are accommodating key-worker children in class, while also teaching remotely. When a teacher teaches in-class, he or she can see what is happening and can adjust their approach accordingly. But without direct feedback, how can schools ensure they are always providing the best experience they can for all remote learners?
Now, four schools in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom are using Ombea to solve this problem. Those four schools are Cholsey Primary School, Ladygrove Park Primary School, St John’s School, and Willowcroft Community School. Together they comprise the OPEN Academy Trust.
The OPEN senior leadership team came across Ombea while discussing the challenges of online teaching. They already knew remote engagement was hard, but they lacked detailed insight into the specific problems for each child on any given day. They considered running a traditional survey but quickly realised there were limitations. At best, a survey can show a snapshot of issues at a single point in time. When the situation changes, as it always does with COVID, the results become redundant. Experience told them they could also expect low engagement rates. They needed something that would capture a lot of feedback continuously, so they could stay ahead of changing needs.
OPEN are now using the Ombea Anywhere module to run a weekly ‘5-second check-in’.
Each school uses a different platform to communicate with parents, but they all work perfectly with Ombea. For example, at Willowcroft they use ‘Class Dojo’ to share work, communicate with parents, and so on. Now, at the end of each week, they share their 5-second check-in link (named for its short and snappy design which should take no longer than 5 seconds to complete).
Jane Hemery is the Headteacher at Willowcroft. Here’s what she had to say: “The Ombea smileys are a light-touch way of getting chatty, honest feedback. They’re really friendly and our parents are liking that. They like that we’re listening to what they have to say.” Jane followed up by telling us: “The feedback has been great! Even the negative comments aren’t really negative, but insightful. We’ve also had far more feedback every week than I thought we would get.”
Andrew Markham, the Headteacher at Ladygrove Park found Ombea helped with consitency. “We've been able to verify that most of our approaches are received well but one trend in replies showed parents were mindful of consistency of amount of work from day to day. We held a staff meeting on Monday to look at this. Teachers discussed each other's approaches online with the focus on consistency of work.”
Nicky Hughes is the Headteacher at St John’s. She reflected on the agility Ombea gives them. “One of our teachers heard some anecdotal negative feedback on Maths. She was really worried about it and came to me. We realised we could adjust the Ombea check-in to ask about Maths, so we did. We put it out on Friday and by Monday we had masses of insight. The staff went through it, tweaked our approach, and we were done. It’s so quick to double-check these anecdotal comments!”
So the schools have enjoyed the volume and type of insight, as well as the agility. What else? Over to Rosie Eastwood, Headteacher at Cholsey, for her view. “I have been analysing the results every week and feeding back comments to our teaching staff. As a result of feedback we have made some minor adjustments to our remote learning offer and followed up with any families where they have identified their children are struggling. It has been fantastic to see the level of support from families!”
But isn’t all of this just a survey tool? Not really. Andrew put it best when he told us, “Honestly, I was a bit dismissive of this at first. I thought it was just another survey, and we already have both Google Forms and Microsoft. Then I heard the other Heads talking about the feedback they were getting and I had to take a closer look. I’m glad I did. This isn’t about surveys, it’s about continuous listening and continuous improvement.”
And finally, Rosie wrapped it up best. “In summary I would say it has been a fantastic tool to be able to use to reach out and get real time feedback from staff and parents. So easy to use too ! I imagine our families have welcomed the survey each week because it is a way that they can keep in touch and let us know how we are doing - parents do like to do this!”
