Clare Borrill: ‘It’s been such a relief to have the school filled with students again’

Unprecedented has become one of the most overused words of 2020, principally because it describes so perfectly the extraordinary impact that the coronavirus pandemic has had on every aspect of our lives.

The first year as the head of any school is always going to be tough, but I could never have imagined that my first year as headteacher of The Petchey Academy would be disrupted in quite such an extreme way, or that so many students would miss so much valuable face-to-face learning time.

Teachers don’t usually rejoice at being able to hear students in the corridors, but it’s been such a relief to have the school filled with students again.

I have been amazed at how easily students seem to have adapted to what has become the “new normal” in terms of the changes to their timetables, lunch arrangements, and sports classes, as well as the continuous reminders about social distancing, washing their hands, and having to wear face masks.

The students themselves are also telling us that they are happy to be back, in familiar surroundings and with more structure to their daily lives once again. Any concerns over the safety of being back in school have come from parents and carers as opposed to from the students themselves.

I welcome the government’s stance in wanting to keep young people in school for as long as it’s safely possible this autumn and winter. Despite alarm in the media, we have not noticed dramatic rates of absenteeism since the start of the year – long-suffering parents and carers were pleased to be able to return their beloved offspring to us once again!

The impact of lockdown is evident in our youngest students, who missed out on the last half of their final year at primary school. Despite many extremely proactive schools and teachers, we are discovering a lot of gaps in their knowledge base.

Schools always have catching up to do after the six-week summer holidays as the long break from education always has a negative impact on learning, and school closures last term have amplified this regression.

In terms of their emotional wellbeing, we have noticed that, on the whole, students appear to be rather flat – they don’t appear to have quite so much of their usual spark since coming back to school.

Fortunately, we are in a good place to support students with the emotional fallout of the pandemic and any events that may have traumatised them during lockdown.

One of the structural changes that we started working towards last year was changes to our pastoral care systems.

We already had dedicated Progress & Achievement Leaders for each year group in place, but this year we reduced the size of form tutor groups, and they now meet at the start of each day. This enables tutors to check in with their tutees every day and really get to know them well, so any concerns over the wellbeing of students can be picked up early and flagged to our year teams and Student Wellbeing Manager.

Before the return of staff and students, we, like most schools, completed a comprehensive risk assessment to inform our Covid response strategy. We are following all the guidance and recommendations laid out by the government, but, also like every workplace, it is impossible to guarantee a totally sterile and risk-free environment.

From a buildings and facilities perspective, this includes the use of screens in reception areas, sanitising stations throughout the academy, water fountains for people with disabilities, and reduced opening hours to allow for enhanced cleaning each night. These measures were not complicated to introduce, but they all come at a financial cost to the academy.

More tricky has been the logistical side of complying with government guidance, such as restricting the movement of students around the building, staggering start and finish times, and keeping year groups separate.

Most inner city schools don’t have the luxury of lots of unused space to enable students to be socially distanced in class, and whilst we are fortunate to have lots of outdoor space for a school in central London, the British weather isn’t always conducive to outdoor play.

The staggered starts and ends to the day, and separate lunches by year group further reduce the mixing of pupils, but these have an impact on lesson times and increase workload for staff who need to be on duty to manage these safely.

Early on in the term we made the decision to require all students and staff to wear face masks when inside the academy, but not in classrooms. Although this is not obligatory within the government guidance, it is increasingly becoming the norm and eminently sensible with local infection rates rising.

That said, masks are a huge barrier to normal communication, and they have become just another thing to keep reminding students about when they’re in school, along with tucking shirts in or straightening ties.

As far as possible we have restricted movement of year groups around the academy, so it’s the teachers that move classroom for many lessons rather than students. This reduces the volume of student transitions around the academy and the potential for mixing. It has had the effect of making the academy feel more calm, so it’s a strategy that we will continue to deploy whenever it is that we are able to remove all the other Covid-related restrictions.

The long term implications of school closure and the impact on this generation of young people may not be felt until we are a couple of years down the line and we have more data on student progress to compare with pre-Covid times.

Along with the much-needed acceleration to blended online learning in the public sector, what lockdown has also highlighted to me is the need for schools and educators to not only teach students facts and figures to obtain qualifications, but to support them in being well prepared for the future and for adulthood.

The current state of the economy means the future for this generation of students is far from certain, but it will without doubt require them to be adaptable to a rapidly changing job climate, digitally agile, resilient, and able to think for themselves.