Ripley St Thomas Academy – Sixth Form – ‘Information for University and College Admissions Teams’

• Information concerning the amount of teaching lost overall and the alternative provision for remote education delivered to sixth form students:

Ripley St Thomas Sixth Form was closed for lockdown for two main periods in the 2020-2021 academic year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. These were the whole of the first half term of the Spring term in January and into February, and again for the last week of the Summer term.

All teaching was transferred online with teachers working from home. Students were provided with a mixture of independent learning tasks, set weekly via our online virtual environment, Firefly, and incorporating PowerPoints (some with video/audio recordings of teachers), workbook study, and a number of live online lessons via Microsoft Teams.

Not all students were able to engage fully with our online provision or with face-to-face lessons or tutorials due to individual family circumstances, however, the majority were well-prepared with laptops provided by the school.

• The impact on the information used to determine predicted grades:

A period of formal examinations for this year group took place in June 2021. These internal exams were used to inform UCAS predicted grades, alongside further assessment in September 2021. We do not expect there to have been any impact of Covid-19 on these exams.