Packages have been distributed across Croydon to support children who are facing remote learning.
Learning packages have been delivered to 18 primary schools in Croydon containing basic but essential resources such as pens, pencils and exercise books.
Philipa Harvey, women’s officer at the National Education Union (NEU)’s branch in Croydon, is helping to deliver the learning packages.
She said: “The idea started off for just a few children, but when we brought the idea to the NEU, they said it was something they could definitely support us with, as they recognised the levels of poverty were so bad.
“When we are planning activities for the children to do at home, we are limited for what we can do because they don’t always have the basic equipment to use.”
Croydon’s branch of the NEU hopes to deliver to as many schools as they can, depending on how long the situation goes on for.
Ellie Sharp, Year 5 teacher at Purley Oaks Primary School, said: “I came up with the initiative because in my school around 45% of our children have free school meals and half of the children don’t have the resources they need for remote learning.
“We used the money we have as Croydon NEU branch to pay for all the equipment to help the community and we have left it up to the schools to distribute to their pupils.”
Croydon NEU has been delivering equipment to schools, so they can distribute it to pupils in order to provide a better remote learning environment.
NEU is the largest education union in Europe, representing over 450,000 members, the majority of whom are teachers.
Croydon NEU has delivered over 400 learning packages to support children’s remote learning during another lockdown, one of the schools being Oasis Academy, who tweeted out their thanks for the learning packs they received.
You can visit Croydon NEU’s website here.
