There is no looking back

It is wonderful to have pupils back in school. However, we have not returned to life exactly as it was before the pandemic – nor should we yearn to.

Schools have been forced to adapt swiftly during this past year and in some areas of school life, this has led to improvements that we will want to retain.

Having seen the advantages that remote teaching can bring, why would we pack up these skills and file them away as having been some peculiar quirk of 2020-21? Remote learning and communication are here to stay in some capacity. Not as a permanent replacement, obviously; nothing compares with face-to-face learning in a classroom with an expert teacher. But remote lessons will always have their place.

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Think of the pupil who cannot be in school in person for medical reasons; the overseas student whose flight is cancelled; the reviser who re-watches a lesson because they didn’t fully understand a concept the first time around. The value of being able to join or watch a recording of a remote lesson is incalculable. This also allows us to work even more collaboratively with our partner state schools, to share resources and online lessons, consolidation and mentoring opportunities to students.

We can also more easily widen experience. At Benenden we are fortunate to frequently welcome high-profile speakers — in recent months these have included BBC news presenter

Mishal Husain, Labour MP David Lammy, Leader of the Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg and acclaimed musician Chi-chi Nwanoku — and it is far simpler for us to share these opportunities with students at other schools when they are held online: venue capacity, travel and other logistical barriers are all overcome. The online format has enabled us to ‘meet’ frequently with parents and keep them updated with happenings in school and for our pastoral team to offer ‘fireside’ talks on supporting girls to navigate the teenage years.

The culture of online meetings that has been developed recently is one we should largely continue to embrace. Getting on a train to attend a London meeting in person (when you live in Kent) will become rarer, now that we have seen the compelling time effi ciencies of remote meetings. That said, I am also looking forward to meeting again with people in person.

Furthermore, we have all — staff and students — upskilled during these past few months. Whether it’s becoming more confident with operating technology, creating videos, improving presentation skills or gaining greater collaboration with colleagues through digital platforms, the lockdown has offered the opportunity to rapidly enhance skills that will serve individuals very well for the longer term. In addition, our young charges — whether they recognise it or not at the moment — are certainly more adaptable and resilient: skills that will serve them well in the longer term.

Any successful organisation is continually reviewing its operations, and the pandemic has provided schools with the ideal breathing space to take stock.

There is unquestionably no substitute for visiting a school in person to see it for yourself, especially if you are considering a boarding school. But virtual open days and other events have become an invaluable initial research tool for those parents at the very early stages of looking for a senior school, much like househunters watching a video tour of a property on an estate agent’s website.

The benefits extend to our current community too. I see no reason to stop running our weekly surveys of pupils’ wellbeing when we’re back on site. We will continue, in some form, to offer online parents’ mornings, Q&A sessions with our senior leadership team and some of our major school events — such as Speech Day and our carol services — will be live-streamed so relatives can join us.

We are delighted to have welcomed our pupils back in person. But this does not mean that everything should go back to precisely how it was before.