It’s been a week of significant announcements for schools, with the plans for returning to school being unveiled as well as the headlines for Teacher Assessed Grades. It is of course very exciting to have our students returning, all together, to be once again back in their school – and we are very hopeful that, this time, it will be for good.
But it’s interesting, isn’t it, the notion of this being a ‘return’, which brings with it the suggestion of going back to something, or reverting to a norm, finding ourselves once again in the place where we started. And as we begin, slowly, to emerge from this third lockdown, I feel we shouldn’t be seeing anything as a return or reversion, but rather as the beginning of a new outlook and a new way of being.
If we try to mimic the ‘good old days’ we will only ever be disappointed and find the present day wanting. Those of us of a certain age know for ourselves how easy it is to fall into lazy nostalgia about how brilliant things used to be (in particular, idealising our pre-digital childhoods is a trick we can easily play on ourselves) and I am keen that the girls don’t fall into that mental trap for themselves about life pre-covid. We have all changed and learned over the past year, and the world has changed drastically around us – and it is imperative that we recognise and hang on to significant aspects of that change, and the progress which they represent. Matthew Taylor writes in a brilliant blog for the RSA that ‘Innovation and change arise from disruption to the dominant patterns and habits that comprised the status quo. The more critical the shock, the more energy is released and the less able we are to ignore it; obvious faultlines are exposed but also, if we look and listen closely, we can notice what might be new foundations.’ Recognising both the faultlines and the new foundations will allow us all to embrace the newness of our experiences and outlooks as a result of the pandemic, and will allow our students fully to understand what is important to them going forwards. The work we will be doing with them in the coming weeks, months and indeed years should and will reflect this: the importance of recognising the responsibility which the privilege of an outstanding education brings, for example, signifies the faultline exposed by the pandemic of the education gap in our country, and allows us to build a new foundation of true commitment to making a difference in our community.
So, short-term, we’ll be looking at re-connecting, re-embedding in our lovely school and re-establishing all of those relationships which matter so much to us. But that’s where the ‘re-actions’ should end, with our focus very much on looking forward, excited about the brave new world in which we find ourselves.