Keep the world learning, together

Wherever you are in the world, a lot has changed over these past few months. Whether you’re a teacher working from home, a teacher working in school, or a parent who feels just a little bit out of their depth (or all of the above!), education looks different for all of us now. Home Educator, TA, Childminder, office staff, cook, governor or cleaner – whatever your role, we’ve all had to adjust so that each of us can play our part in keeping the world learning. 

And we know how difficult this has been – for those who have been furloughed, for supply teachers, for the self-employed, for school staff trying to support pupils at home, for those looking after the children of keyworkers, for parents with their children at home – we can all acknowledge the unique challenges each of us faces. 

At Beyond, we recognise this and we’ve been working tirelessly to support you during this period. On 6th March, we started rolling out our free access codes to support teachers and families in countries where schools were closing. For one month initially and then extended again – access to our full collection of 650,000+ resources has now been free for over three months. 

On 23rd March, the very first day of school closures in the UK, we launched our Home Learning Hub – a daily timetable of educational activities for KS3 and GCSE students. Lots of team members worked lots of hours to bring this to you so quickly. So far, we’ve seen around 2.5 million visits to this area of the site – and we’re really proud of this. This is in addition to our newly-created home learning packs, daily live lessons, wellbeing support and much, much more. 

Now is the time to let you know that the full, free access will be coming to a close from June 14th. Here’s why:

Firstly – out of fairness to our existing members. As with any offer of help, there will be some who benefit more than others – and we tried to make this offer as fair as we could by allowing existing members to also upgrade to full access, free of charge. Without a doubt, we could not have done this without the ongoing support of our members whose subscriptions continue to renew. We know that many of you are happy to help us to help others, but we do recognise that we cannot do this in the long-term. 

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – a huge thank you to our existing members. From all of us here at Beyond and from the people who have been able to access this support too. We really do value every single one of you and thank you for making this possible.

Secondly – with increased website traffic, additional web pages and resources comes increased cost. In fact, we’ve seen around a 40% cost increase in this area, and it’s important for us to be transparent with our members about this. Despite being a digital product, it does cost us money to keep the website running efficiently and effectively, and to pay our team to keep creating the incredible content you all love. 

Each and every subscription enables us to do what we do best – providing incredible quality teaching and learning materials for teachers, parents and anyone who has a role within education. It also allows us to be able to respond quickly and helpfully, bringing you what you need exactly when you need it – just as we have over these past few months. 

We appreciate the difficult decisions households have to make, and we don’t take your support for granted, so we’ve laid out a few ways a Beyond subscription can help you over the coming weeks and months:

  1. Responsive and reactionary resources – Already, we have a huge range of resources to support with the wider re-opening of schools, created with an appreciation that specialists won’t always be on hand to deliver the pupils’ learning. Find them here
  2. Writing school reports – We know that many teachers will still be producing end of year reports. With a bank of statements, editable by name, pronoun and more at the click of a button, you’ll have your reports written in no time at all. Find them here or use our report writer tool.
  3. Planning on tap – No matter the age group or the subject you teach (or might be asked to teach) we have a lesson planned out for you by former or current teachers. Our units of work in English, Maths and Science offer fully planned and resourced lessons, ready to roll out, across the curriculum. 
  4. Revision materials and exam practise – Our year 9s and 10s have had their GCSE preparation disrupted, but we can support you in bringing them up to speed. Browse our Science, English and Maths GCSE pages to find a host of revision tools, specimen papers and more. 
  5. Form time ideas – At this time, form periods could potentially feel more stretched than usual. Our Beyond Debate packs provide the perfect solution to this, offering the chance for pupils to get on with independent work whilst you attend to ensuring that the day will run smoothly.  

To take a look at the range of membership options we offer, visit our membership page

All this and more is ready to go whenever you need it and however you choose. Our talented team of experienced teachers, caring customer support, our designers, illustrators, web developers and more, are all on hand and ready to support you throughout these next few months – whatever happens…

Leave a Reply