Irish Examiner - 27th April 2021
Home school community liaison co-ordinators have highlighted the "digital divide" faced by many parents from disadvantaged backgrounds during the course of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The finding is included in a new study carried out by researchers at Trinity College Dublin's School of Education, with the home school community liaison co-ordinators (HSCLs) reporting that some parents felt overwhelmed and had been "running out of steam", while also facing very practical issues like a shortage of food and heating.
The study, carried out by Dr Colman Ross, Maria Kennedy, and Dr Ann Devitt, sets out how HSCLs "play an essential role in the Irish education system to address systemic educational disadvantage by supporting children and families" and how the pandemic impacted on their work from mid-March to July 2020.
Connection between school and home
The role of HSCLs is particularly important for Deis (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) schools, acting as a connection between school and home. It said the aspect of HSCLs work that receives the largest time allocation is home visits, followed by informal and/or incidental meetings with parents, but pandemic restrictions and school closures "greatly impacted" that work.
Ten HSCLS from 10 Deis primary schools, located in both urban and rural areas of Leinster, Munster and Connacht, were interviewed and one problem identified at an early stage was a shortage of basic critical needs, such as housing, groceries, hot meals, heating, sanitation, seen as a prerequisite to support learning needs.
According to one participant: "Many families had no income and lost jobs, so we had to get basic support to these families in dire straits as soon as possible... There was a lot of need. Economically families suffered. Fathers would be in the building trade and mothers working part-time in shopping centres, etc."
Another participant said: "Home visits should be at least 50% of the HSCL work ... The shutdown crippled the effectiveness of the HSCL support."
Covid restrictions meant it was difficult for HSCLs to maintain contact with families, with parents suffering from addiction, family difficulties, or living alone with children without greater family support deemed particularly vulnerable.
Food drop-offs
Food drop-offs were carried out to homes and HSCLs who lived in the locality of their school could still call to families, at a social distance, but HSCLs were also not distinguished as essential workers and were subject to restrictions.
HSCLs reported that the main digital constraints were access to devices, dependency on one device, and data access, where many parents only had phone data bundles insufficient for the bandwidth demands of remote learning.
"Many parents were overwhelmed in the early weeks of school closures and some parents were reported to be ‘running out of steam’," it said.
"Findings clearly indicate that any digital divide must be addressed in a holistic manner that considers material resources as well as capacity building within the wider school community."
Dr Devitt said: “Some of the amazing work that was happening in schools to help some of our most vulnerable children and families through the school closures was not visible to the wider public".
The school closures were stressful for everyone with children but for some families, it wasn’t just that they didn’t have access to broadband, it was that they couldn’t put food on the table. The home school community liaison coordinators working with their school teams were absolutely critical to identifying and addressing these needs. We felt it was important to capture and highlight this.
Home School Community Liaison Coordinators (HSCL) perspectives on supporting family wellbeing and learning during the Covid-19 school closures: critical needs and lessons learnedis part of a wider Family Digital Literacy project and was published in Irish Educational Studies.