Why the trials teachers have faced during the coronavirus pandemic will lead to better schools

This year will have changed perspectives – educators will be less likely to put up with poorly-defined regulations and Ofsted will hold no fear, writes Ed Dorrell

Teachers – and pupils – have faced plenty of strain in 2020 (Getty Images)

A much-respected figure from the world of education – someone who oversees a large number of schools around the country – said a fascinating thing to me the other day.

“You know, after this is all over... We’re going to stop worrying about Ofsted, and start worrying about what really matters: running good, happy schools.”

The “all” that he was referring to was of course the Covid-19 crisis.

Much has been written – I suspect wrongly – about how “things will never be the same again” after the coronavirus pandemic and how it will represent some kind of national reset button. I suspect such future-gazing optimists hugely underestimate people’s desire to return to normality as soon as possible.

The consequence of Covid-19 will, I feel confident, be more subtle and take longer to identify. For many it will be about spending more time with family and in their communities, for example. It will be about a change in priority, the consequences of which will be intangible in the short-term.

And similarly I think my friend at the top of this article was signposting something subtle – but very important – that is likely to change about our school system.

Teachers, heads and governors have had their resilience tested to near breaking point this term. The pressure on them has been immense. And the support from government has been – to be extremely generous – mixed. 

They have been struggled with constantly changing regulations, surging positive results, teacher and students in and out of isolation, lessons moving online and off at the drop of the hat and, and increasingly jumpy parents. While many of their friends – me included – have sat at home tapping away on a laptop, school staff have worked under the most trying circumstances. 

You only need to look at the debacle of the last few days – will schools be allowed to close early in the last few days, or won’t they? – to know this is true.

All of this will, I think, result in two things: one good, and one bad.

Let’s start with the bad, which many others have already identified. The fact is that too many exceptional educators will burn out in the coming months and feel forced to either take early retirement or to try to find something else less all-consuming to pay for the mortgage. That this is the last thing the teaching profession needs right now – it is already deep in a recruitment and retention crisis.

With the bad news out of the way, let’s discuss the good. And that is that those heads and teachers who do stick it out in the months and years ahead will be more stubborn (which is, to be clear, a good thing). They will be less likely to put up with poorly thought out regulations, less likely to bend to the will of whatever politician or inspector is bearing down on them and more likely, god-willing, to back their own judgement. 

In short, I suspect my friendly educationalist will not be alone in developing a new perspective on what really matters.

Incidentally, this isn’t to say that Ofsted is a bad thing – it’s a key pillar of our high-performing education system and many underserved parents rely on it. But too often it still has a distorting effect on many schools who have sought only to collect “outstanding” banners.

Not anymore. Many teachers have glimpsed into the abys since schools fully reopened in September, and compared to that, a few Ofsted inspectors who would have previously seemed scary are unlikely to be such a terrifying prospect.

And in this new stubborn confidence, I suspect they may have the support of parents in a way that might previously have been if not absent, slightly more half-hearted. Through this last term, I suspect many parents have discovered a new-found respect for the work of their children’s schools.

Commenting on a three-minute video of her son’s Christmas performance that she’d just received from their primary, one mum wrote to me yesterday: “It’s the only glimpse parents have had inside a school or of any staff since March. It’s a heart-wrenching reminder of how all this is for the kids and how amazing our head and teachers really are...”