In the past week, we at Tes Scotland have been enjoying something of a return to how we used to do things before Covid.
Last Friday, I travelled to Crieff for the annual congress of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association (SSTA) - the first time we had attended an education conference in person since before Covid. Earlier this week, my colleague Emma Seith visited a school in Glasgow, the first time either of us had been in a school for work purposes since the first couple of months of 2020.
We used to make sure to get out and about frequently before the pandemic hit. It was a crucial part of our job: if we wanted to understand what was going on in Scottish education, we had to see it from the inside and we had to spend time with the people working in and shaping it at all levels.
All that changed, of course, and we may never see a full return to the busy itineraries of education events like we had before.
It is crucial, nevertheless, that we make these more tangible connections with the sector we write about. Features about what a particular school is doing are always enhanced if we have actually been there and got a feel for the place. And it will only improve our understanding of key topical issues in education if we spend time around those who shape and are affected by them.
That is part of what marks out our coverage of education: no other media outlet in Scotland has visited as many schools or been to as many education events as we have in all the more than 15 years I’ve been here.
Not that the Covid-fuelled boom in video-based communication is a bad thing. It has been a crucial tool for us amid all the restrictions during the pandemic and enabled us to report and analyse all the crucial developments at a time when many have told us that Tes Scotland‘s coverage was more important than it has ever been.
But we aim to rediscover the habit, as far as possible, of leaving our desks and venturing out. It is by doing so that we can most effectively shine a light on issues that haven’t had much coverage elsewhere, that we find new vantage points from which to explore the issues of the day.
So, as we dust off our travel bags and start perusing train timetables again, where should we make a beeline for? Please do get in touch and let us know - it is, after all, for our readers that we make the effort to head out into the physical, tangible world of Scottish education.
Henry Hepburn is Scotland editor at Tes. He tweets @Henry_Hepburn
