The uplifting life of a college during Covid-19

As I write this, it is nine months to the day since the first lockdown in the UK was announced: so long ago in terms of the torrents of water which have flowed under the bridge since then, that all the finer details of that time are a blur. If I ever have time, it would be fascinating to go back through the e-mails from those weeks to see if they match the memories that endure. But here is the story of Selby College as I recall it from then until now:

March 2020: Reading the runes, and watching the direction in the further education sector, we had spent the week before lockdown communicating with colleagues across the college and then to the students. Prepare to learn from home. The last day for students on site will be 19th March. We asked colleagues to think carefully about what they would need at home, to empty the office fridges, take their plants and evacuate the campus on Friday 20th March.

And we stayed away from it, most of us, for three months. Within days an emergency management WhatsApp group was superseded by Microsoft Teams. Two years of skill development in digital teaching and learning happened in two months. It wasn’t perfect, but over 80% of students engaged in some way, many well. Those in the most practical subjects, and on the lower level courses struggled more, but on the remainder of the courses, students learned as fully as possible.

For those who were aiming for ‘final’ exams, which were cancelled of course, tutors worked for hours to calculate (very carefully actually), the ‘Centre-Assessed Grades’ which, after the horrendous national debacle over exam results, were eventually used to see the students through to universities such as Oxford, Durham and Liverpool and into many other routes too.

Our guidance tutors and counselling team kept in touch with students, thinking about their welfare. Knowing that our incoming pupils from school Year 11 were adrift in lockdown too, colleagues designed ‘HeadStart’, a campaign to provide them with advance materials and advice for the courses they would start with us in the autumn.

Some colleagues did stay on site. Our IT Services team boosted our remote desktop facility so it could support hundreds of extra users, and worked with our Learning Resource Centre staff to repurpose every classroom-based laptop or device (and format 30 new ones donated by our partner Drax Power) and get them safely out to students, driving with a letter from me in their pocket in case they needed to justify their journey.

Our Estates team kept the campus ticking over and one of our caretakers scoured the college for every item of PPE and delivered them to local NHS and care sector organisations. And then kept on volunteering, driving a college care and delivering medicines to those who needed them. Other colleagues helped the national effort too. Scrubs were sewn. 3D printers turned out visors.

Our governance processes moved very smoothly online. We didn’t miss a meeting, nor a beat. The leadership team and I kept leading. Scanning the horizon, deciphering endless and lengthly guidance, and using judgement to make the right decisions for our students and organisation. And then communicating: both transmitting and receiving, consulting and listening. We used phones, mails, Teams and, for me, increasingly recorded videos, which got the message through quickly and accessibly.

There was a lot of work. I still can’t thank colleagues enough for the shift they put in that spring. And then, as we reached Easter, more tasks on the horizon, as policy and thoughts turned to how we could reopen safely when lockdown was over. I began to organise our plans with the concept of ‘Return’ (to campus), ‘Restart’ (education on site) and a third important element ‘Reset’. The latter was about the opportunity to use the crisis to ‘leave behind’, in the past before lockdown, lots of the preconceptions about how the college should run, tonnes of unwieldy procedure and a bag full of redundant culture. It was an exciting thought, so much so that I wrote an article about it in TES FE: https://www.tes.com/news/how-do-we-go-back-once-restrictions-are-lifted Looking back, despite all the challenges Covid posed to our students and to us, and the damage it did, the response to it was a turning point for our college and how we collectively do things.

June: And so, we prepared to return to campus. The Estates team pulled out the stops in terms of safety measures, and haven’t ceased doing so since. As important as the physical measures, were the briefing and training sessions every individual colleague received, and the opportunity they got to ask questions. Their engagement and thoughts about how to be safe in their specific environment were demanded, and they didn’t disappoint. Through this, not just physical measures, but also confidence and assurance, were fixed in place. When we surveyed staff in September, 89% said they felt safe on campus.

When we got to August, we worked through the exam crisis to support our students reach their destinations, and then planned to re-open at scale. Our aim from the start was to try to get all students into education on campus, to give them as much opportunity as possible to meet their tutors and classmates, to feel part of the college and learn our IT systems. Thus, if further lockdowns occurred, they would be as prepared as possible.

September: Throughout the crisis so far, we have always tried to align our tactics with the direction of travel and to work with colleagues so they feel as assured as possible. Thus, even though late August saw really low Covid cases in Selby, we started with staggered inductions, a tactic that paid off when a small local spike in cases happened as the summer ended. We moved ahead of the curve to insist on face-coverings in public areas before they were mandated, and ploughed management time to patrolling the campus to educate upon, and ensure compliance with, safety precautions. Our students responded marvellously, with unprompted compliance with precautions at over 95%.

As the autumn went on, we did all the things we normally would, but with a levy of Covid precautions atop them all. Colleagues dealt with exhaustion and complexities of running our own fast-response internal track and trace system, to mandate self-isolations whenever a case or risk of one became apparent. After the oddest, hardest six months of their working lives, colleagues dug in even harder for our students and each other. We didn’t find one instance of a staff member contracting Covid from an in-college source. We’re pretty sure that students didn’t infect each other on campus either, as the evidence of spread in groups we’d expected to find wasn’t there either.

And we had some other successes too, like winning the opportunity to work with Siemens Mobility training the first apprentices for the massive train-building plant they are creating in nearby Goole, and our Deputy Principal worked with Drax Power to secure a five-year, ￡180,000 sponsorship from the energy giant, which will underpin new STEM and green energy education. Our Estates team managed the procurement and installation of new equipment to teach automated manufacturing skills, our part of the Yorkshire and Humberside Institute of Technology.

As late October arrived, it was clear that the national and local case rates were climbing. Disruption through self and group isolations was rising. We decided to put the rapid development of our digital learning model to the test and gave notice we would put some of our students on higher level courses onto a rotation of week in, week out, from mid-November to thin numbers on campus. Those on lower level courses, and largely practical ones, would stay in college as they would learn best there. Colleagues and students had time to plan and prepare, though that didn’t negate the work necessary. The outcomes have been really good, though everyone would prefer to be in college all the time. In mid-December, we extended this policy for at least the two weeks after the Christmas break, and found this fitted with new national guidance and gives us time to assess a darkening national situation.

Compared to some colleges, in the areas which have been in ‘Tier 3’ throughout the autumn, which have been absolutely clobbered by huge case numbers and isolations (and still come through), we have been less affected at Selby College. We have still had hundreds of precautionary isolations. It has still been hard and exhausting, but we reckon we have delivered over 85% of education on campus during the autumn, and done pretty well for those who have had some learning at home. We’ve managed to mark Remembrance Day and colleagues found lots of creative ways to conjure some Christmas spirit. We constantly recognise and give thanks for exceptional achievements by our staff, and for the service and graft which every day is made up of.

December: Having good people, who care with passion about students, the college and each other, and who have expertise and experience, has been central to this. We’ve changed management and meeting structures, utilised technology and cut out the chaff to keep colleagues involved and informed, and able to communicate themselves to each other and students. We’ve listened to their feedback, and used it to shape the response to outside influences as we monitor and interpret them. We’ve explained decisions, encouraged innovation and trusted them.

We are reflective, and we have worked, and will continue to work, on honing performance. We’ve developed our strategies, and we will continue to make some bold moves, right for our students and community.

There are things we wish we could have done better (aren’t there always) in the breakneck pace since March, but we haven’t done badly. Some colleagues have had a tough time through work, and a few have faced real challenges at home as Covid-19 has turned society upside down and threatened health and life.

I can’t, through this article tell the stories of everyone I want to, otherwise I’d quickly be up to 2,500 words. But I post regularly here on LinkedIn and via @SelbyPrincipal on Twitter, and I’ll keep telling the story of our students, college and my colleagues. Please do add me to your streams or follow if you are interested. I'd love to connect and hear your stories too.

Whatever the world throws at us in 2021, at Selby College, we’ll keep working for our students, clients and communities.