Online lessons terms and frequently asked questions

Remember that safeguarding is just as important when teaching online as it is when teaching face to face.

Suffolk County Music Service (SCMS) will continue to apply our adopted Code of conduct  Guidance for Safer Working Practice.

SCMS tutors will be required to display a means by which they can be identified, such as Suffolk County Council (SCC) ID badge, either on-screen or actual, at all times during the lesson. 

SCMS tutors will protect themselves from accidental inappropriate contact with students by restricting any online profile (Facebook etc.) so that it does not automatically accept contact requests and is not accessible to students. 

• If using a profile picture ensure that it uses a business-like profile picture.
• Establish a serious and professional manner when using Video Conferencing technologies. 

Students and their parents/carers are reminded that Teams is to be used for lessons only and not for other contact with tutors, such as general messaging. 

SCMS Tutors must only have online contact with pupils at the agreed scheduled lesson time. 

Parents and pupils: It is against SCC policy for SCMS, parents or pupils to record all or any parts of lessons unless this is explicitly agreed in writing with SCC/SCMS.

Encourage students to restrict their own profiles so that they can only receive calls from known contacts. 

SCMS Tutors must always confirm at the start of each lesson that an adult is in close proximity to the student. If an adult is not available at the student's home, the lesson will not go ahead.  A student is anyone under the age of 18.

Lessons must be delivered from a suitable location, for example not in bedrooms or bathrooms. 

• It is useful for the pupil to be away from other noise and to consider what is visible in the background, particularly if there are more than 1 student in the lesson.
• Where drum kits are kept in pupil's bedrooms agreement must be made with the Parent and SCMS Senior Tutor for tuition to take place. Cameras should only show the drum kit and pupil against a suitable background, such as a blank wall.  

Do not allow students, or other members of the household, to wear excessively informal attire or present against a messy background.  If this happens, the SCMS tutor will terminate the call and communicate the reason afterwards to the pupil’s parent and their Line Manager. The same applies if a student behaves inappropriately, and it may be necessary to take further action if this happens, just as we would with a face-to-face lesson.

All lesson timings must match the SCMS Tutor’s Teams Calendar.  

As part of our safeguarding and quality assurance process Parents and pupils are advised that a member of the Senior Leadership Team and Senior Tutor Team might pop-in to the lesson. They will aim to be as unobtrusive as possible and keep their audio and video feed muted. 

• This optional attendee will be invited to lessons and parents will see that in the lesson invite message they receive.  
• During the online lesson you will know who is in the session as their initials appear in a circle. The initials you might see are: DS, MH, AC, BC, HS, TR, VT, BT, MS, NP. 
• Not every lesson will have a ‘pop-in’. Where we are able, our intention is that only one other member of the SCMS team will ‘pop-in’ to the lesson.  

Report any Safeguarding concerns as you would normally.

Pupils can join a meeting without having a Teams account but only on PC or laptop. Mobile devices requires the app.

Guidance on joining a meeting via Desktop and Mobile devices can be found on the Microsoft support website. 

Download the Teams app from the Microsoft website.

This option provides the best experience but will require the parent to set up an account using the parent’s email address. There is no charge for this product.

We can replicate current ‘safeguarding’ protocol of observing a lesson through a window or entering the classroom by joining the lesson via the Teams Meeting.

In order to do this, Tutors need to have invited DS, MH, SM, or ST to the lesson in advance and via their SCC email address. This will enable them to bypass the lobby and just join the meeting.

It is suggested that the nominated person just joins as audio as this will be less distracting than a video stream popping up. The nominated person will still be able to see the other video streams though.

Tutors delivering lessons should advise the student(s) at the start of the lesson that someone may just ‘pop in’ to the lesson and who that would be.

Dress smartly (casual is fine) and use a neutral background. 

Ensure that the teaching/learning space is suitable, such as be careful of what else might be happening / or could happen without your knowledge / intent in your surroundings.  

It's possible that your pupil is waiting in the lobby for a previous lesson. This can happen when the pupil joins using an old link, not the link for a new lesson.

When a new lesson is set up a new link is created, which is emailed to the parent. Check your 'sent items' to make sure this has been sent. If it hasn't sent, you can copy/paste the link into a new email message.

When a day and time is agreed, Tutors can create a recurring lesson so the link is the same each week. Parents/Carers can save this link in their inbox so it's easy to find every week. 

If necessary, Tutors can cancel individual lessons on a week by week basis without cancelling the whole series. For example, bank holidays and half term.

There could be many reasons.

Availability of band-width and the broadband connection and connectivity in the geographical area / the home environments will both have an effect. 

Using a neutral background helps the camera to mitigate lag with audio and video streaming. Parents need to be aware that poor connection may be down to their broadband connection and therefore out of your control.

It may also be worth suggesting to parents and teachers that use of a network cable (if they have one) rather than home WiFi may improve their connection.

It may be necessary to widen the frame depending on your instrument, so take care that the frame is well chosen and appropriate. 

In the initial instance working via video conferencing may require the teacher to alter their teaching approach, and the pupil will similarly need to change their approach to interactions and responding to requests from the teacher.

This will be a learning curve for us all and the best advice is to go slowly, try a few lessons, talk so that we iron out any problems where possible and just enjoy having the lesson and interaction.

Yes. SCMS tutors are using this with their @suffolk.gov.uk addresses (domain) and using our Suffolk County Council (SCC) Office365 accounts. These are all accessed through SCC IT contracts. Our Safeguarding protocols have been agreed by SCC. 

Yes. You can use Office365, the Teams App (log-in using your @SCC details), or Teams via a web browser.

You must make sure that and log onto the SCC SharePoint platform. If you must download anything to your own machine immediately upload to the SCC One Drive and delete from your personal machine. Refer to the Working away from the office and use of IT guidance. 

No. Whilst it is possible to do this the SCC policy is not to at this time. 

Parents and pupils: It is against SCC policy for SCMS, parents or pupils to record all or parts of lessons unless this is explicitly agreed in writing with SCC/SCMS.

Safeguarding and Keeping Children Safe in Education on GOV.UK.

Suffolk County Council Code of conduct policy.

Guidance for safer working practice for those working with children and young people in education settings May 2019.

In order to manage consecutive lessons with different pupils, and to minimise disruption towards the end of a lesson, Tutors will set up each lesson as a separate Teams meeting.

We would appreciate pupils, and their parents help, in keeping to the lessons times. It may be useful if the pupil is ready and signed into the lesson a few minutes before the session is due to begin.

At the end of a lesson the SCMS tutor will need to be ready and prepared to accept their next pupil into the session from the Waiting Room.

When setting up a Teams meeting a unique meeting ID is automatically created, this meeting ID is used to enable the meeting attendee to join the meeting.

The SCMS Tutor will send the pupil’s parent a meeting request from the Tutor’s @suffolk.gov.uk email address.

Where a pupil is deemed an adult (over 18 years of age) we will be able to email to them directly.

Included in the invitation as an optional attendee will be someone from the Music Service Leadership Team. This is part of our safeguarding and quality assurance process.

Once the lesson/meeting request is accepted the meeting invitation could disappear from the email inbox. The meeting request might automatically be transferred to a linked electronic calendar. Not everybody will have this system activated on their private email.

To address this complication we are asking Tutors send an email to the parent (this is covered in point 3) with the individual meeting ID pasted into it (see screen shot in point 2).

It is important that the parent (pupil) can access the hyperlink that says Join Microsoft Teams Meeting, as this is the way the pupil will join each specific lesson. Each hyperlink contains an individual meeting ID that enables the student to join.

Parents email address: we are unable to use a parent’s email that is an @suffolk.gov.uk email address. It will be preferable to use a personal email address rather than a professional work email address.

If multiple students are participating in the same lesson the guidance at Step 3 will be followed.

This can only be done once the meeting invite has been sent.

The Tutor will set the Meeting Options, found in the body of the meeting invite. Please see screenshots below. 

This enables the Tutor to keep the pupil in the Waiting Room/Lobby until they are brought into the lesson.

Our Safeguarding Team can bypass the lobby and enter the lesson without being invited in. Parents / Pupils will see when someone enters the lesson as we will set ‘Announce when callers join or leave’ to Yes.

Tutors will send a copy of the body of the invite that says Join Microsoft Teams Meeting to parents in an email. This hyperlink contains the meeting ID specific to each individual lesson and is required by each specific pupil to join their lesson.

Unfortunately Meeting invitations do not have a BCC option as an email does, this step will enable our tutors to send lesson times (Meeting requests) to ensure parent email addresses are not visible to others outside of the Music Service.

1. Tutor creates a new email.
2. Include details of the scheduled lesson (date, time)
3. Include the parent (student) email address(es) in the BCC section.
4. Paste the body of the meeting invite you copied in step 2 into the email – it is important to ensure it is the body of the meeting invite for the specific lesson as this includes the meeting ID that enables the student to join.

When joining the lesson as a ‘guest’ advise pupils to join using the protocol of pupil's first name and initial of last name only.

Advise that a person (Optional attendee)may appear mid lesson. This Optional attendee will be someone from the Music Service Leadership Team. This is part of our safeguarding and quality assurance process.

During the online lesson the parent and pupil will know who is in the session as their initials appear in a circle. The initials you might see are: DS; MH; AC; BC; HS; TR; VT; BT; MS; NP.

Remind parents and pupils that it is against our policy for us or pupils to record all or parts of lessons unless this is explicitly agreed with SCC/SCMS.

Students will be admitted to their lesson from the lobby (Waiting Room) where they will need to wait to be admitted to the lesson.

• The teacher will need to admit each student to the lesson. This can only be done if the teacher has joined the meeting via their SCC email address login.
• Pupils may wish to consider joining the lesson a couple of minutes before the scheduled start time so that they are ready and waiting to be admitted from the lobby feature.
• Teachers may wish to ‘blur their background’; this is a built in function to Teams that is achieved through one easy click. Blurring the background helps to minimise distractions to students, and helps with privacy. Unfortunately, students joining from outside SCC (such as non SCC email addresses) do not appear to be able to do this for their picture via the web link access or mobile device Teams App versions.