Why schools must open in September

We all remember Monday, 23 March. All schools in England were closed, apart from for a very small number of children. School staff put plans in place over the course of a weekend, to try to continue to provide education for their pupils; for how long, nobody knew.

As my state secondary school, where I am headteacher, we looked at how we could move to remote teaching to provide the best education possible. Initially, we prioritised those children doing GCSE or A level coursework and then we moved to a model where all pupils received live lessons, homework, feedback and 1:1 support where possible. We experienced many setbacks. We had to learn Microsoft Teams in a one-hour training session on the Friday before lockdown. Then we had to show pupils how to use it from home. We also had to hold staff meetings, governors’ meetings and live lessons from our homes – sharing devices and WiFi bandwidth with our families, just as everyone had to.