Uniservity

On Thursday 13 March, all Hong Kong Kindergartens, Primary and Special Schools were closed by order of the Hong Kong Department of Health. The sudden closure, affecting some 500,000 students, was in response to the flu epidemic sweeping the region. All schools are expected to re-open on March 31.

The English Schools Foundation (ESF) reacted quickly to the closures and set their Disaster Plans into action. The 16 ESF Schools are actively using the UniServity cLc Learning Platform to support teaching and learning. Announcements were immediately posted on all 16 ESF Primary School cLc Learning Platforms, keeping learners and parents up to date with news during the unforeseen closures.

The cLc Learning Platform enabled all ESF Primary Schools to quickly set their learners a variety of tasks and activities to work on from home during the enforced absence break. Just a few hours into the crisis and some children were already submitting their work and messaging their teachers. Teacher’s notes on the cLc offer parents and children an explanation to the tasks and a clear rubric to establish success criteria.

Beacon Hill School has set a number of activities for their Year 1 to 6 learners and are using the integrated cLc tools to work on various activities including Story writing and maths investigations from home. Kowloon Junior School has set a number of activities using an online ‘Learning Blog’, enabling learners to interact and collaborate and teachers to provide remote online support and mentoring.

Phil Stubbs, Director of Education Development, UniServity, Hong Kong, commented “ It is a credit to the ESF teachers and school leaders that they were able to respond to the emergency so quickly. The efforts of the staff have ensured that learning has been able to continue without disruption at a very important time of year.”