A MORE relaxed approach to schoolwork has been helping pupils and their families continue to cope with the demands of home schooling.

Hutton Rudby primary school has found that removing deadlines and enabling youngsters to influence their own pace of learning has helped everybody to pull through this challenging period.

While some might expect schools to exert tighter control over children’s workloads while they are away from the classroom, Hutton Rudby has taken the opposite approach by letting children have more control over their own learning.

This has proved successful with both children and the adults supervising them.

The school has left more challenging new topics to be covered for when normal classes return in March, helping to reduce anxiety about lockdown work.

The school’s approach to ‘handing in’ work may also sound unusual, by removing deadlines, but this too has been found to work.

Headteacher Matthew Kelly said: “It has been critically important that we listen and work with all our parents.

"As a parent myself, I know how difficult the balancing act of home-schooling and working from home has been for many of our parents.”