The Year 6 teacher at our school is known for many things: his immaculate hair and beard, his impressive knowledge of world flags, his love of fried chicken and his overuse of modal verbs in response to requests from SLT.

“Can you please make sure these letters get home today?”

“Yeah, I could do that.”

It may wind me up and he might know it.

I too have been guilty of overusing modal verbs, and one of my earliest lessons in leadership was to be cautious about stating what then turns out you cannot deliver.

“We could think about replacing the playground equipment. I may be able to put some money aside in the budget for a new AstroTurf.”    

Overpromising and underdelivering

And I am sure that overpromising and underdelivering is something that is being reflected on a lot in Whitehall at the moment. 

Yesterday, Gavin Williamson came out and confirmed that the idea of having all primary pupils back for the month before the summer was now not feasible.  

While it would have been great to be able to do that, those of us in schools could have told him weeks ago that it was not feasible.

I actually believe that the Department for Education (DfE) knew that as well, and maybe here we have an example of No 10 throwing both school leaders and the DfE under the bus in order to get some headlines. 

But that’s the cynic in me, right?

The emotional toll

Recently, I have been pulled up by some who have questioned whether it is a case of me not wanting to make this work. 

Those accusations hurt - because the reality is that I, along with my fellow local headteachers, have been trying to work out how exactly how we can do that. But without much bigger thinking beyond our own capacity, it was clearly a non-starter. 

I know that some of my fellow heads are concerned about the next six weeks being handed over to individual headteachers to plan.

I’ve seen the emotional toll of an unrelenting barrage of complaints from staff, parents and governors hurled at headteachers. 

I fear the profession will lose some of them unless we find consensus and manage expectations in our communities. 

I’ve never been on the receiving end of so many “I don’t envy you and your job” comments since that time I walked into an office full of parents complaining that I had poisoned their children. 

(Just for my present employer’s sake, I hadn’t, by the way. It was snow they were licking and not salt, and I had told them to stop.)

When will normal return?

I’m confident that as difficult as it is right now, we will get through the next six weeks. I’m pleased as well that it appears that we can also have the flexibility to increase who we bring back. 

We are absolutely desperate to get year groups back to see their teachers before the end of term and now I can see a way to do it, even if it is for only a couple of days. These days are so important to keep connections with children and families.

But it really is September that concerns me because I am not convinced that we will be back to normal on 1 September.  

Whirling in my brain are three of four options about how we can bring children back, but this is not time to do things alone. 

We must as a profession actively work with the powers that be on planning for this.

Bring in our expertise

I’d like to see the appointment of a group of independent professionals seconded from their schools and organisations to lead on this.

Inevitably there will be the usual accusations of cronyism, but if they would work on having a mix of representatives that included a range of teaching age groups and those in active roles as well as those in strategic roles, it could be extremely powerful.   

We may need temporary radical solutions and we might not, but to do nothing or to hand it over to us headteachers to work everything out on our own - again - is unacceptable.

Ruth Luzmore is headteacher at St Mary Magdalene Academy, North London. She tweets @RLuzmore