Flash Academy joins the #naldic28 conference as one of our Gold Sponsors. In this guest post, Flash Academy describes how their Apps can be used to support learners after lockdown.
Students with EAL are amongst those that have been hardest hit by the current pandemic. To overcome this challenge, a growing number of schools are using the Government’s new £1bn of catch-up funding to ensure they have remote learning provision in place to support these pupils to accelerate their learning and guard against further potential lockdowns.
Remote learning strategies employed by schools to date have largely focussed on mainstream provision, resulting in an increasing education gap for vulnerable pupils with EAL. A 2020 DfE report into EAL showed pupils who attained fluency in English did 3x better on average than pupils with low levels of proficiency, in both English and Maths.
Learning Labs is a partly Local Authority funded UK Education team exploring how technology can be used to improve outcomes for EAL and ESOL. The team are behind the award-winning app FlashAcademy®, which is now the most widely used EAL technology resource intervention in UK schools. Endorsed by ASCL and NAHT, FlashAcademy® provides pupils with an independent learning experience that can be used on any device (smartphone, tablet or PC), particularly important when devices can be in short supply in home environments.
“Having FlashAcademy® has continued their engagement with English, something we feared would be lost during lockdown. It is very easy to use & intuitive; FlashAcademy® has been invaluable.” – David Hinks, EAL Programme Coordinator, Sevenoaks Welcomes Refugees
Teaching English from 45 home languages, it unlocks language barriers to learning via curriculum-aligned lessons and an engaging, multi-modal pedagogy. Pupils have repeated exposure to any concepts that they are struggling with, allowing learners to follow a personalised learner path that supports them in their home language and permits them to work independently. The dedicated teacher dashboard enables educators to track progress in the class and remotely, clearly identifying any gaps in learning. Progress reports can be customised, giving staff the insights to personalise learning and assist every pupil in achieving their full potential.
“Over 60% of our pupils with EAL progressed by at least one proficiency grade over 12 months [vs national average of only 18%] – it is having a tremendous impact for our pupils.” – Claire Evans, Deputy Head, Anderton Park Primary School
FlashAcademy® also have hundreds of free teacher support materials, including classroom and remote learning resources – e.g. Welcome Packs, Home Learning Packs and CPD webinars. Thousands of educators recently tuned in to discussions on health & wellbeing, language across the curriculum, and managing EAL in high-need schools – hosted by Claire Evans, Deputy Head at Anderton Park Primary School.
“We realised that for many of our EAL children, they had not spoken any English at home during the lock-down period, which made them particularly vulnerable as learners. We have used some of our COVID funding to introduce Flash Academy to accelerate their progress and better support their learning both in school and remotely.” Andy Poole, Head Teacher, St Clement’s and St John’s Infant School
You can find guidance for catch-up funding eligibility on the DfE’s website. For more information about FlashAcademy’s range of EAL support resources, click here.
Flash Academy is a Gold Sponsor of NALDIC’s National Conference 2020. This post is an advertisement.
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