Who knew that when a school was closed, there'd be more work than when it was open?
We've got a lot of stuff here actually open for quite a while
as part of the build and recovery mobilisation team which is literally a
posh word for sticking things down on floors, segregating areas, trying to get
everything in place ready for the students.
Our belief and the science suggests that we would not be coming back in the normal way in September and
therefore we have created every single plan to work through to at least November.
We've made the decision to go as a one-way system just it means that
everyone's not walking, you know, straight into the corners so to get from there to
there, you've now got to go downstairs, round the ground-floor and back up down
the corridor. It's crazy, absolutely crazy.
My unique challenges here are very small size.
The fact we're based around a single building with only two doors that come into the building.
90% of our students come on public transport which is why we've taken the additional
measures of putting the sinks in.
Our toilets are right in the center of the building so to get them to go to the toilet,
and wash their hands would mean they'd have to pass through nearly all the building to get there.
We're right in the centre of Birmingham.
We've got the Aston Expressway, we've got the motorway,
the m6 is the other side of those flats just there.
So for a pollution perspective, there is no windows that open in the building.
I'm really excited to go to school actually,
I'm excited about actually see how it's set up now.
I am very, very nervous to go back to school
but the same kind of looking forward to meeting my teachers and my friends.
What if you get the virus? What if you accidentally gives someone else the virus when you get home?
Especially if you live with all the people and people who might have disabilities or other
health conditions.
I think there's more of a word for people that do go and public transport.
I feel like it's gonna be really strange seeing the new layout of the building,
how everything's going to quite like,
regimented and blocked out and you go in, stay at one desk and then leave and no like,
break or lunch or anything.
I just got off the bus.
Now I'm just walking to college but I'm not gonna take the usual entrance
that they usually tell us to take.
There's another direction we should take, we're just all the way to the back of the college.
For the washing stations that we're going to need to use in order to be able to enter College.
So that's eight students out of a possible 27.
We still got probably ten minutes to go.
Hi guys, you alright?
No waiting? I see ... no waiting, that's very good.
How did you get here today?
Bus.
Bus? And how was that today? — It felt normal.
It felt normal? No problems? Not many people in there?
No, not a lot.
Put your mask on.
So make sure that goes inside your bag ...
Who were you sharing your laptop with?
My brother and sister.
How did you work that out? Who had what time, how did you compete?
Fighting most of the time.
One laptop between the three of you? — Yeah.
That's difficult, isn't it?
One of the changes that we've got are the fact that we've got temporary buckets
underneath to collect the water.
We will obviously put them in properly but this is part of a long term process.
OK, add yourself through.
Come on in, how are you? It's very nice to see you.
Keeping going round to the front stairs.
Being here today is like a ghost town, really, it's really weird.
There's no one here, it's just deserted.
It felt like a new place and of course I missed it at the same time, I don't know how that works.
Everything's normal to a certain degree
but everyone's a bit on edge.
As if it's the first day I arrived again, that same feeling.
A little welfare check, the first thing we have is a couple of people haven't read the full information
so I was just running through a little bit of like settling in stuff before we get into some maths
and ready for the exams.
You're going to have two minutes.
Up until this point, we have kind of been able to say,
the year 11s haven't even gone to their GCSEs yet,
we've got ages and now we're the next group to do our GCSEs,
and it's become very real.
The pandemic, exams, missed all these learning, even more pressure building up ...
This is our generation's world war with the invisible enemy and we have no clue
what to expect, what to do.
I feel like it's going to be something that's not going to go away the second that
like, things open up or by the end of the year.
It's going to be felt for quite a while.
I'd rather have an extra year to be honest because, you know, education for life so, yeah, it's pretty hard.
There's many different ways I get anxious walking around school,
trying to keep distance and trying to learn without being scared to learn.
It's going to be really hard to walk around without ... like you are dodging people.
I know some friends and family, their children have been working full-time at home,
they've got their own computer, they've got their own bedroom, they've got their own space
to work ... some of our students have got that some haven't and those ones who
were at home with a sibling or two, sharing their bedroom and a computer between six ...
I mean even if they have the best motivation in the world, they've not got
the opportunity and motivation varies as well.
I don't think we're going to bother 100% close this gap.
I think we're looking at damage control.
We saw today about 32 students walk through the door.
Were our systems in place and did they work?
And the positive is yes, they did
but they worked very effectively for 30 students.
Even if there was a fully comprehensive summer program which clearly with three weeks to go,
we just don't have enough time to put stuff in place,
the amounts of stuff they're going to cover next year alone is huge
and my challenges are really, I'm worried at the moment of how we're going to work
forward with enough work for next year to get that in, as well as what's clear
from today already, there's definitely a recovery based curriculum in place.
This isn't about who does the best home learning because I can tell you,
we've got a fantastic online home learning, we've been very high technical here but
even our percentages of uptake from a motivation perspective
but also who can access it, has been fairly medium to low and that's my biggest concern
that we'll find that students from inner-city backgrounds
will absolutely be behind those from more affluent and certainly the independent sector.