… is definitely a distant and hazy memory. Part of this is maybe due to my aging brain, but I think it’s largely due to the phenomenal year we’ve just had and our efforts to keep up with a fast pace of change. We’ve faced challenge after challenge and with the need to look forward, we’ve seldom had the chance to look back.
But this week, I did take time to try and remember what I was doing at this point last year in the run up to Christmas. Slowly, the details of the rollercoaster of following Government announcements around the Christmas ‘mixing’ rules came flooding back. The disappointment we all felt when we had to cancel our plans to spend the festive period with our loved ones and our worries over what lay ahead.
This time last year, school leaders were planning for the return of pupils to school in January 2021. It meant we spent most of our Christmas holiday working hard to put these measures into place. It took a sift back through emails to recall the sophisticated planning that was undertaken for a phased return of pupils to School, accompanied by remote teaching for some, mass lateral flow testing and ongoing daily testing – all of which was communicated to schools just as the Christmas holiday began. It was a mammoth task, with guidance and advice being issued and reissued over the festive period.
In the end, a national lockdown was enforced, and schools were closed in early January. This decision cut through all our prior planning and work. Senior colleagues reflected that we did at least have Christmas Day off and away from phones, laptops, Microsoft Teams meetings and the Department for Education website. But just as we have done throughout the pandemic, we didn’t look back to the efforts, now superseded, we had undertaken; instead we looked forward to how we could address the next challenge and do our best for our pupils.
This year, as the festive holidays approach, the Omicron variant has left us all feeling uncertain once again about the ‘holiday’ ahead. All of us – colleagues, pupils and parents – could do with a break this Christmas. I hope we get one. But one thing I am certain of is that whatever we have to face, we will overcome, and we will keep looking forward with confidence.
I would like to wish every member of the BGS family a restful and peaceful festive break.
#HocAge
“…we looked forward to how we could address the next challenge and do our best for our pupils.”
Be Social!