As we herald a new year, one of the more ironic reflections is while we live in a world that enables rapid interconnection driven by technological innovations, many of us feel more disconnected than ever before.

At a time when our burgeoning social networks mean we seem highly connected, we are lonelier than we have ever been.

Young people struggle to see themselves in the people they meet; they cannot fathom how they might fit in the tumultuous world before them. Elderly and dispossessed members of our communities feel ignored, devoid of agency and aching for companionship and conversation.

Most worrisome of all, people of all ages and walks of life are battling demons within, beset by worries, incapacitated by anxieties and unable to connect meaningfully with those around them.

Out of the darkness

The common thread for all who feel this disconnect is a darkness within and a failure to see the meaning and purpose that their efforts bring to those around them. Yet, as the Persian poet Hafez once wrote: “I wish I could show you when you are lonely, or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being.”

We cannot allow our schools to be microcosms of our fractured society. There is a danger they come to reflect the uneasy dissonance, dissatisfied restlessness and fraying of the threads that bind diverse peoples together.

But, as mini societies of their own, schools offer the promise of joy and a comforting feeling of belonging for all of the young people and families they serve and who serve within them. At their best, they can be ports to seek refuge from the wider storm and reassuring lighthouses that help all of us to navigate perils.

The value of education

Yet, for many young people, the past five years have been a particularly challenging time. Many struggle to see the value of education - with increasing persistent absence and a higher proportion excluded from the school community to be nominally “educated” in alternative placements or at home.

Children with acute needs - those with disabilities or who suffer from significant anxiety and cognitive challenges - are particularly vulnerable to feeling they do not belong within school, just as they may feel that sense of loneliness from wider society.

In 2025, we need schools to act not just as traditional repositories of knowledge, but as places that provide joyful and profound experiences, nurturing feelings of companionship and a safe shelter in which to make mistakes and learn from them.

Of course, our schools must be calm oases - but that cannot be achieved by the removal of our most challenging children.

Helping pupils with SEND thrive

Instead, new approaches are required - flexing our curricula and the way we deliver learning so they can thrive in mainstream schooling and sense the “astonishing light of their own being”.

The people who serve our children - our teachers, support staff and leaders - are not immune from the headwinds that are disrupting workplaces everywhere either.

Our schools are grappling with a crisis in recruitment and retention, an increasing desire for flexible approaches to working and a need to develop new skills to address complex and seemingly intractable challenges in the classroom.

To address this, we have to find a healthy balance between the need to do more for the learning and welfare of the children in our care and the responsibility we have for the wellbeing of those we charge with that work.

We have to be open to finding solutions to ensure teachers and school leaders do not feel the need to choose between the vocation they love and their health, happiness or commitment to family.

Engaging families and communities

Moreover, our parents are foundational to everything we are trying to achieve as a society. Many are anxious their children are inheriting a world that is less safe, prosperous and promising than they knew.

Some see schools as transactional places - like the supermarket or GP surgery. They do not recognise their child’s school as a hub of meaningful, warm and welcoming experiences and opportunities.

So, in 2025, we have to make more of an effort to open our schools to wider services, invite parents to celebrate their children’s achievements and be much more intentional about how we use school resources and activities to ease and enrich their lives.

Above all - in the year ahead - we need to use our schools to nurture a sense of community.

In our classrooms, the way our schools connect with their parents and those who work within them and, most importantly, in how we lift up the most vulnerable around us, there is the chance to help all of us see the astonishing light we bring to the lives of all around us.

Sir Hamid Patel is CEO of Star Academies

For the latest education news and analysis delivered every weekday morning, sign up for the Tes Daily newsletter