Hybrid school modelled on Portland Place in London

[KeepTrying0]

Hi,

I wondered if anybody might know about this Duke Education Hybrid School plan?

My son is home schooling with EBSA and needs to learn from books at home, but also needs access to a school to get exams with practical components, and to meet friends locally. This school system sounds like a good idea to me if they would let us work from books.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/dec/26/first-uk-wide-hybrid-school-offering-home-and-class-learning-to-open-in-2024
https://dukeseducation.com/

The nearest one that is planned for next September will be cycling distance from our house which could be a really good thing.

It seems to be based on Portland Place Hybrid School in London and I wondered if anybody might know if that is working well and how it works in practice?

Thanks!

@kayfrey001 we are thinking of starting with them after Easter. I think I prefer it to KingsInterhigh as it seems a bit more supportive and focused on the individual. Also the big lecture lessons, and larger class sizes at Kings put me off. Our son is extremely anxious, and would likely find that overwhelming.

If it is not too much trouble, it would be really helpful if you could let me know any comments you had on it once you get going? It is so hard to know what these places are actually like, as they all have such good promotional material!

Yes of course no problems! I will try and remember to update, or please just ping again here in a few weeks time. So far, there are many emails and forms to get through. But since enrolling 2 days ago, I now already have a timetable built out for my son, I have to check through it all, so that is next on my to do list. I've asked for, but not heard back about the mentor / pastoral for a meeting to discuss my son's needs which is important to me. Hope that helps for now!

Hi
My son is a full-time day student at Portland Place School and he has friends who attend as Hybrid students.

The Hybrid children and parents seem very well integrated with the school as a whole, from what I've seen at school assemblies the Hybrid children are thriving.

It's an amazing school, I would highly recommend it.

@Mystic1975 but its closing

Hi, you should get it back. My son was offered a Sept 2024 y7 placement in early December and I paid the enrollment fee and to be fair they called me on Friday to say that they just learned of the potential closure the night before and would refund me my money straight away. Am gutted, of all the secondary schools we saw, this was the one my son absolutely loved.

@usernamebore I hope you are well. So quick update on Minerva! The onboarding is intense! There are a scheduled set of talks to go through from a Tues - Thursday. I followed along ok (I am tech savvy and organised), but my autistic son got very upset at it, so something to bear in mind if your child may get overwhelmed at these sessions! You then get 1 live taught lesson per subject, and you have to schedule in your own slots in to do the prework, and the post work. You can watch back recordings as well. They will help to schedule in more live lessons that go back through the terms work to help you catch up. You do get a mentor who will also encourage your child. My son has enjoyed the socials which are also scheduled in. You get a parent portal separately so you can see which lessons your child has logged into and you can also see their completion of their pre and post work. All in all, this works for us whilst my son is recovering his health. We have a very specific set of circumstances though, so son is doing only the core subjects (5 GCSE) and I am not sure if he will genuinely catch up to be able to do exams - but we are taking 1 day at a time. Hope that helps. x

As a parent in the Portland Place Hybrid School, let me tell you, it was the best thing I ever did. The staff care about the students, lessons are distinct and my son thrived - after not going to school for 2 years. He is all set now to get 7s to 9s across the board. If the lovely Ms Baig is leading this for Dukes, and if she has the same autonomy she had at Portland Place, then we already know it will be phenomenal. You are all in safe hands and it is highly recommended. Big thumbs up from us!

Can you please tell me which state school also had an hybrid option?

Just by way of update from our side, we are well into the first week at Minerva and we are extremely impressed. Staff and kids lovely. Work at a good and adaptable level. Highly flexible. Good example is in the live lessons - depending on where your kid is comfortable they can contribute orally, by public chat, or by private chat. They can have cameras on, off, on but showing the ceiling, on but with them blurred out etc. There are social groups but no pressure to join. You can adapt the work to do it when works best for your kid etc.
Technical systems are well thought through and up-to-date. Lots of use of good tech, particularly in terms of assistive tech to help kids with dyslexia etc or other challenges. 1-1- mentor is amazing. Highly recommended

Watching with interest. My DS has been with Kings Interhigh since last May having dropped out of school with EBSA/anxiety in February of Y7. I am trying to find something which would hopefully allow him to transition back into physical school for Y9 and hybrid (with the possibility of becoming full time if he likes it) seemed like a softer method of easing his way back in. I'll be going to the open morning next Wednesday. It seems the the pupils from the Portland Place Hybrid are being encouraged to transfer across to the Park Lane school from September. From the speed of response/number of follow up emails I've been getting to emails from Ambreen I wonder if they are struggling to get pupil numbers up?

Can I ask those who have had children at the Portland Place Hybrid model what the split is of ASD/Neurotypical children in the Hybrid model? How many children are there in most year groups? Am concerned about posts about lessons online not being very well taught/sausage factory approach, though others say their DS have thrived there?

My year 9 son used to attend PPS hybrid school but has now moved on another school. Ambreen has always been fast to reply to emails so I wouldn’t read anything into that. Our experience was that almost every hybrid kid is ASD (diagnosed or undiagnosed) or have other issues and as another mum said to me openly “all these kids are, otherwise why else would you pick this type of schooling”. It was good for my son as it eased him back into schooling but the day in school was tough. The hybrid children were always very separate despite what anyone says. There were plenty of lessons where a teacher wouldn’t be present but given a quiz instead.
From what I’ve heard, most hybrid kids are moving to the new hybrid school from September. It’s not a huge cohort but it’s unlikely to be as it’s niche schooling.
I would be looking at the new school carefully. Because the teachers running the online classes are from the new school. Are they happy to be teaching online now, having extra classes added to their teaching schedules? The day in school will be at the new school where the rules are different. My child has friends who have moved to the day school but are struggling. Some parents have started looking elsewhere for the gcse years.
Whilst the open day will give you a feel, remember it’s not an accurate depiction as schools will talk about the positives only. Maybe do a post asking what the new school is like on mumsnet.
Personally I would be wary about sending my child to a current school model that is moving over to a new school, with different teachers and rules before it has settled.

I agree with the above poster. We had some real concerns about the quality of some of the teaching in the hybrid, and the technology was pretty ropy. Lessons were hit and miss and really depended on the quality of the particular teacher. There were some great ones, but also some who seemed to barely care or be distracted with "real" school stuff. There were only 3 other kids in his Year 8 class, and one of them hardly ever turned up for lessons. Pretty much everyone was on the spectrum in some way.

We never actually managed to get the hybrid model to work for us anyway as our son's anxiety about school was so high, the gaps between the days in school meant every week it was like starting again. There was no way to build up a rhythm. We ended up going full remote and it was the best decision we ever made. His anxiety levels have dropped massively and we have our old happy son back again. MVA are being very supportive and he is slowly easing his way in at his own pace (he went from camera off and private chat with the teacher only to chatting openly in the public chat and even making jokes with some of the other students in just a couple of weeks, which is a huge step forward).

Such great info thanks all. I am looking at Minerva following a failed managed move from my son's mainstream school. He is so self conscious and anxious about entering new school where he knows no one in year 10.
Hoping this might be a good option to get him a handful of GCSE's and restore his faith in academic learning. Wondering about him feeling isolated and off grid though?

Hey bettyorange - MVA do provide opportunities with social rooms twice a week and online enrichment clubs. the kids themselves also have either a discord or snapchat group (both I think). my son really struggled with these at MVA because online friendships are hard to manage. I've got my son into other social groups outside of MVA - such as football training and searching for home ed groups in my area who are happy to meet up and socialise.

Some of these responses must be from Minerva bots. Anyone who has ever experienced Ambreen's care for her students would never say that the hybrid school has been anything less than outstanding. It simply is insincere to suggest otherwise. No family has left the hybrid school whilst under her care. We are looking forward for my child to be with her again from September at Duke's.

@Regena What an extremely weird post, and frankly absurd attitude (which does not do much for your credibility). We had kids leave the school from my child’s class while we were in it, so your statement that no child left the school is patently false.

If, rather than undermining someone’s genuine experience, you bothered to click on my profile on here you would see a significant number of posts showing not only our journey from mainstream but also our initial happiness with PP and our later concerns. Ambreen was amazing, but she does not teach the lessons. Part of the problem was probably the fact that the school was going under during this time, and that will hopefully not be an issue with the new venture.

There's been a fair amount of criticism of Minerva on here recently so that's certainly not the Goldilocks of alternative schools either, from what I can see.

Probably all online/hybrid options are going to be tricky for one reason or another. It's rare to find the perfect school - even 'real full-time school' most parents have a gripe about something don't they?

All you can do is give these places a try. I wish that things weren't so binding so there was more option to test places out. It's a big commitment for any family to sign up to a place for at least one term and then need a term to get out, as it's always one term's notice.

How I envy the kids being born now, outside of the birth bulge. They will have schools begging for them to walk through their doors, the 11+ will be a breeze and perhaps even a term's notice will be a thing of the past.

This is untrue. Many many families have left. Nothing to do with Ambreen whatsoever. How ridiculous to suggest this.

We have decided to give the hybrid school in Green Park a try. Our son will apparently be joining a cohort of only 6 children in Year 9 in September. If it turns out to not work out then he can always return to Kings Interhigh which he was comfortable with, so we'll see how it goes. If there are any others with children in Y 9 or 10 next September I would be happy to make a connection (I think they both go in on a Thursday).

We tried to attend the induction session last week but ended up spending 45 minutes in Green Park instead with my son having an anxiety attack. Fun times!

Hi Lighttaperstandback, just wondering how you are getting on with the hybrid school? we are also thinking of it for our son (currently year 9 and using an online school). Was going to PM you but messages are currently disabled.

Hi there. It's been going ok I think so we will be sticking with it for GCSEs. I'm told our son is doing well academically, though I don't think he'll ever be someone who "loves" school/learning. He is still unable to attend the in person days, but the school have been massively supportive of us in trying different things to get him in and doesn't catastrophise about it when it doesn't happen. The good thing is that he can stay on top of the curriculum, continue to try and find a way to get in for the in person days, but it's not the end of the world academically if he doesn't (plus he's not the only one with issues so he doesn't stick out like a sore thumb). My concern was also that had we stayed in a purely online school I would have struggled to get an anxious child into a strange school/test centre to sit his GCSEs. At least we still have another couple of years to get our son comfortable enough to go in and sit the exams with his cohort of children at LPS.

Our son tells us that he thinks that the quality of the teaching online is definitely better than it was in the online school he was previously in, which was very anonymous. Some of the teachers work in the main school, and others only teach online. There are occasions when the former are busy with a trip or something which means that they just post some work for the kids to do, which isn't ideal, and that probably happens about once a week or so? In this school you do feel like the teachers are trying to get to know each child much as they would in a physical school and do acknowledge effort and achievements, whereas the online school he was in last year really felt like the interaction with pupils was very one way, with school reports feeling very generic. The children do speak during lessons (our DS is studying Spanish and didn't actually speak a word of Spanish during lessons when he was in the online school, which seemed a bit bizarre to me!). Many children don't keep their cameras on in lessons - when nobody has their camera on then nobody wants to put theirs on which creates a vicious cycle, though our son says if everyone is asked to switch on cameras by a teacher than most will, and tells me he finds it easier to concentrate without his on. Lessons are on Microsoft Teams, and are not recorded, so there isn't the possibility to catch up on recorded lessons as there was at KingsInterhigh, but that's not really been an issue for us.

The class size for the current Y9 group is small - it's just gone up to 11 pupils I think, but I've been told there may be a few more in the pipeline in the run up to the start of GCSEs, which apparently happens every year. I believe this year's Y10 has about 20 children. A couple of children have left the hybrid school to transition into the mainstream school, so it's nice to see that that transition is possible without having to go through the process of moving to a different school.

I would say the majority of the pupils have some degree of SEND - many have ASD/Dyslexia (and quite a high proportion at the mainstream LPS as well I would say). I'm not sure there's much social interaction/friendship among the hybrid kids, but it's hard for me to know as our son doesn't go in, but he has friends locally and online so doesn't miss that aspect of school life.

Hope that helps?

Thanks so much for the detailed reply Lighttaperstandback, and sorry for the delayed response. That's good to hear you son is getting on well with it. We have decided to stay with the online school our son is using for now, he is quite happy with it and all the lessons are live but also recorded, which gives a good bit of flexibility if needed. I decided the location of the Green Park hybrid school would have been a bit stressful for us to get to, even once a week, and at this stage it's too close to year 10 to try something new. I hope your son continues to get on well with it.

We are just starting Minerva with my youngest now in year 10. Feels like a leap in the dark but hoping the autonomy and the relief of not being in mainstream will really help him. Will update once we are up and running.
I already like that all subjects and resources are on one platform so fingers crossed.