FOR mum-of-four Vonnie Sandlan the lockdown school experience from last year to this is 'like night and day'.

Vonnie and her husband Bob both work full time and are homeschooling two high school aged children and one at primary - making for an exhausting time for the family.

The one "small saving grace", she says, is that none of the children are at senior phase of secondary.

With the family's dining table turning into both an office and a school, Vonnie is grateful to the children's teachers for the efforts they've made to turn in-person lessons into digital classes. 

And another saving grace has been the mass iPad roll out to every secondary school pupil, teacher and P7 in Glasgow - more than 50,000 devices across the city.  

Vonnie said: "From the lockdown last year when schools closed to this time is an absolutely night and day experience. 

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"We are very fortunate - and we know we are fortunate - that we are not a family with financial challenges, we both have decent jobs, but we didn't have a device per child. 

"So the iPads have been a game changer." 

Nairn, 14, and Erica, 13, attend Rosshall Academy while 11-year-old Greer is a pupil at Crookston Castle Primary School while Vonnie's oldest son is 19. 

As well as the academic aspects of home schooling, Vonnie is also alert to the emotional challenges faced by her children.

She said: "Not being at school with friends has been really, really tough for them. 

"I can talk really positively about all the support that's in place but the practical reality is they are in the second year of their whole lives being turned upside down."

In March, the family went into lockdown a week early as one of the children had a cough - but she says that she "believed with all her heart" the pandemic would be contained and they would be able to visit her mum in America in the April. 

The 38-year-old said: "It was all so sudden. On the turn of a dice the entire function of our schools had to turn to online learning.

"At the last school closure there was an offer there but it wasn't cohesive.

"I was so stretched between trying to do my own job and home school and by Easter it was a battle to get the kids up in the morning.

"They were trying to deal with the consequences of what was happening in their lives too, which was not easy.

"Now, from where we were a year ago to where we are now, they all have devices and a substantial amount of work and it is much more straightforward."

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Since the March lockdown last year and subsequent disruption to schools, teachers across the city have been creating bespoke plans to suit their school communities.

Glasgow City Council sped up its digital learning programme to roll out iPads across the city and schools have signed up to additional apps to improve the quality of home learning.

Primary pupils now have access to programmes such as Seesaw, Showbie and Google classroom to set work and supplement remote learning and packs sent home for pupils.  

Secondary schools are delivering live lessons over Teams.

Training for teachers to deliver online lessons was been carried out during the first lockdown and since the schools returned in August 2020.  

All schools had blended learning plans that, in some schools, had already been put to the test for classes and pupils who had to self-isolate during the school term.  

The Scottish Government’s £3.2 million digital inclusion money was used to buy iPads and support families with access to wifi.

Chris Cunningham, City Convener for Education, Skills and Early Years, said school acknowledge this is "an anxious and challenging time" for our families, schools and pupils.

He said: "Our schools know their families so well and it’s not a one size fits all approach – it never is in Glasgow.

"This is not like the first lockdown as our schools have robust contingency and remote learning plans that they have been developing since August.

"As we stressed in March – we are not expecting parents and carers to replicate lessons at the kitchen table – learning happens in many different forms and we know that families are also having to juggle working at home commitments so we are asking people to do the best they can."

At Sandaig Primary School teachers and pupils were already ahead with digital learning as pupils were completing homework on their iPads using the SeeSaw app before the shut down.

Head teacher Geraldine Smith said the universal iPad roll out has made a huge difference at the Barlanark school. 

She said: "It was very good to get the devices out to all children because sometimes families don't want to tell you they don't have equipment at home or don't want to accept help."

After the first week of home schooling, Geraldine surveyed parents for feedback on the school's remote classes.

Lessons were organised to be uniform across the school so that parents with pupils at different stages weren't having to monitor two types of work at once.

And the day was strictly timetabled.

The head teacher said: "Overwhelmingly parents were saying having the whole day totally time tabled was too much.

"So now mornings are totally planned and then in the afternoons children do a chosen topic.

"So they are still on a time table, but families have the freedom to fit around their day if they are working and it's difficult to keep up."

"Every morning is literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing with a breadth of choices across the afternoon."

Maintaining normalcy through carrying on school traditions is also important - so this year Sandaig's annual Burn's Night poetry competition is moving online.

The shift to digital learning has been a whole school effort too, with support staff asking to be added to computer systems to they could comment on children's work and encourage their efforts. 

Geraldine said: "Teachers have shown a real commitment to our children and our school and have really put themselves out there."

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Vonnie was also quick to praise the efforts of her children's teachers. 

"There's a lot of recognition from the community around both schools about just how much effort has gone on behind the scenes," she said.

"Our teachers have been absolutely magnificent - absolute superheroes, the lot of them."