“Life on campus will be different when we all return - not better, not worse, but different.”

This was how I started the Zoom meeting with our Year 10 parents, before their children led a staggered return by year group, back in May.

As an international school in Shanghai, China, we were among the first campuses in the world to close, from February, owing to Covid-19, with 600 students and 70 teaching staff relocated across four continents from New Zealand to the US.

We were all learning as we went; however, by the time we faced a campus reopening, many in our community had made significant shifts in their view that effective academic, pastoral, wellbeing and holistic programmes could be provided remotely.

However, students, parents and staff were understandably keen to recapture some of the normality of school life where we could be with each other in person, rather than just online.

But there were also worries, fueled both by practical concerns around health and safety as well as the psychological steps to be part of a physical society again.

To balance these competing views, there were five key strands we identified as crucial to getting our campus reopening right.

1. Reassurance

This might sound obvious but it is hard to get right.

It must be given in an authentic way, acknowledging the challenges and the concerns that exist - but also offering encouragement and faith in the ability, integrity and commitment of staff to make the situation work.

Emotionally intelligent leadership is vital here; validate the feelings of anxiety, but also gently help people to balance more rational perspectives.

2. Information

Doubt, uncertainty and fear can develop where there is a vacuum of communication.

As such, once a plan is devised, rehearsed, walked through as a student and how it will work finally agreed on, it is vital to share it and talk the community through it.

It is vital you are as detailed as possible. We covered as many details as possible, since some parents can become stuck at a mental impasse of not knowing exactly how their child will purchase their usual apple juice in the morning break, for example.

It also helped that we circulated community-friendly overviews digitally and posted online, so that everyone had equal access and could digest in their own way and in their own time.

We collected FAQs in advance and aimed to explain as much as we could, as transparently as possible.

Some of the issues raised also helped us in our planning, including the detail of uniform requirements, mobile device policies, and midday exit arrangements for older students.

Additionally, we maintained at least weekly updates - both to manage the detail of ongoing changes regularly and reliably, as well as to establish a central voice of leadership.

3. Support

Rarely has such a whole-school community team effort been required before, and leadership needs to be calm, caring and positively orientated.

As such we developed specific induction programmes for students on their return, suspending curriculum initially for a planned period of reintegration and reconnection.

This combined unstructured time for students to be with each other and re-establish peer-group togetherness, alongside a carousel of sessions that dealt with practical, academic, pastoral and wellbeing matters.

We continued to host wellbeing and reflection sessions for several weeks after this, alongside a range of optional one-to-one support for individuals offered by staff colleagues with pastoral skills to professional coaching and counselling, outsourced if necessary.

This helped promote a campus-wide ethos of emotional safety, where it is OK not to be OK and to ask for help - both for staff and students. This is a key point: support staff wellbeing as sincerely as student wellbeing.

By also creating deliberate professional time for colleagues to reconnect informally, as well as facilitating structured team rebuilding at respective levels, colleagues rebuilt trust and were able to share their feelings and reflections.

4. Listen

Another key focus must be on actively seeking feedback through surveys, focus groups and reps to ensure you understand how staff are feeling, issues that exist and the wider opinions of the school community.

In short, ask how things were going and have an approachable, open-door practice that welcomes suggestions, thoughts and comments.

5. Manage campus access

Each school needs to respect applicable health regulations and guidance - from staggered arrivals to face masks to regular cleaning routines.

Of course, though, many of these practices assume that students or staff are carrying potential infection onto campus and are, therefore, intended to lower the risk of transfer.

However, as much as we may encourage physical distancing, enforcing it with campus-wide consistency at all times was impractical.

We realised that our collective energies were more usefully directed to keeping potential infection off campus, as much as we could.

Daily, signed self-declarations of each individual’s and their cohabitants’ health were required; no one came onto campus until they assured us in writing, each morning, that neither they nor anyone in their household were displaying any of the listed symptoms.

Craig Jenkinson recently finished as head of senior school, Dulwich College Shanghai Pudong, where he worked for two years