More than 100 parents and children attended a recent storytelling event organised by University of Sussex researchers.

A new survey developed by Sussex psychologists is looking for the opinions of parents and teachers to try to understand what schools are doing to support home schooling during the Covid-19 pandemic - and what parents and teachers think about it.

The survey, which has been funded by the European Association of Social Psychology, investigates what schools are doing to support parents and pupils while the schools are closed, parents’ and teachers’ evaluations of that support, and whether these are related to educational outcomes.

Dr Matthew Easterbrook, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, who is leading on this research, said:

“We have put together this survey for teachers and parents of school-aged pupils to help us understand what schools are providing to support home schooling, and what parents and teachers think about them. 

“We have a fairly muddy picture of what schools are actually doing at the moment, although we do know that there is a lot of variation. We hope to use the results from our survey to produce a resource pack and best-practice recommendations for parents and schools.”

There are fears that the school closures could increase the attainment gap between pupils from richer and poorer families. The results of the survey will help us to understand whether and why this might happen, and to develop guidance and support to prevent it.

To access the survey simply click here.