In the week before lockdown, we worked 12-hour days at breakneck speed, mired in confusion and anxiety. Our staffing levels had dropped to 50 per cent and our pupil numbers had dropped by a third; we were just about able to keep functioning.

Then it was announced that schools would close to children except those most vulnerable or the children of key workers, with no definition being available for either of these categories for almost two days.

Within 24 hours we had identified those whom we felt to be vulnerable or key workers and waited for government clarity to check our lists against. We waited and waited with the clock ticking towards doors closing at 3pm Friday and tried to reassure parents who were desperate to know what arrangements they needed to put in place. Emails flew between schools and frustration grew as no clarity emerged.

In the meantime, we distributed learning packs, said our goodbyes, kept the children happy and felt keenly the sadness of preparing to send our pupils home for an indeterminate period, in a world that felt dangerous and insecure. The day before we closed, a Year 5 child earnestly asked me if it were true that some schools were closing. I nodded at her and fearfully she replied, “Not us, though, Miss - we won’t close, will we?” When I told her we would, but that we would stay in touch with everyone, her eyes filled up and the boy behind her put his head down, saying, “I hate coronavirus!” I completely agreed with him.

School screeched to a halt. At the beginning of the week, we were a buzzing, energetic place of learning, friendship, community support and safe refuge; by the end of the week, we were the provider of an online learning platform, a childcare facility and a safeguarding and community hub, distributing food and support to the vulnerable and needy.

Over the weekend and the next few days, the words “unprecedented”, “weird” and “strange” were heard again and again. I struggled to deal with the strange lockdown atmosphere around an almost empty school, while we greeted our children at the door with a thermometer, maintained as much of a distance between each other as possible and kept cleaning our hands.

Then I got ill. Four other members of staff all came down with similar symptoms.

For a week, I stayed in my bedroom away from family members. While I was ill, it didn’t matter, but when I started to recover this forced separation felt tortuous. All around me were news reports of people dying in ever greater numbers and I was scared.

When I emerged from my isolation, it was evident how much loss everyone was experiencing - great travel adventures on hold, lost parties and useless prom dresses, closed businesses teetering on the edge of disaster and local food-bank demand at an incredible level. Neighbours waved sadly at us from a distance; social media conversations ached with love and a desire to be back together.

In the weeks since then, I have alternated between working at school and volunteering at the food bank. In both situations, I have collided with the impact of this virus across society.

Teachers and pastoral staff have phoned everyone at least every two weeks, and updated learning activities. We maintained a childcare facility over the Easter holiday and we have tried to help families through the complete shambles of claiming free school meal vouchers. Our Food Club continues to operate once per week and we are making food-bank referrals for those struggling to access food. And yet it still doesn’t feel enough.

I know that most of our parents are doing a great job, and their children feel loved and supported. They are trying to create a family routine with daily exercise, making and creating works of art, digging in the garden, daily learning time, walking their dogs and enjoying spring in all its glory. They are trying to shut out the news of infection, disaster and death, speaking to friends and family via social media, imagining what it will be like when they are able to physically be together. We are reassuring these parents that it is all right to have bad, sad and anxious days and to not worry if routines slip, that the perfect Facebook parent is a myth.

For others, lockdown is an intensely traumatic experience, forcing them into close proximity with fractured or negative relationships, with growing mental health problems and anxiety levels, shrinking finances and food reserves. Their children have no routine, their body clocks have changed completely without the routine of school, not sleeping until way past midnight, entertaining themselves on the internet and with computer games, isolated within their homes, vulnerable to the dangers of the internet like never before. For these parents, we are encouraging them to ask for help, to make use of school provision as it stands and signposting them to online or support agencies who can help.

I see this in school but also on my deliveries to food-bank clients. People who haven’t eaten for some time and have no food in the house. People who haven’t seen another human being for so long and are scared to be around others, even those delivering food.

The experience of lockdown is very different across society and this will be evident in our classrooms when the children return to school.

What I hear from our school community is how much they love the way we care for each other and the kindness that we show, not an appreciation for a worksheet on equivalent fractions or subordinate clauses. Our school community has poured out gratitude and affection towards my staff who are working tirelessly to keep in contact and support. 

I feel the separation from colleagues, children and their families keenly and I worry that we haven’t done enough, or are failing to keep our children safe and happy.

When we are all back together, and we will be, we will know that we have lived through a collective national and global trauma, and that the world in which we emerge into will have further huge challenges to face. I know that we cannot go back to business as usual, that this forced period of slowing down and isolation must provide a national pause for thought.

So many of my staff and colleagues are saying, ”We can’t go back to how things were”. Everything feels different, new values are emerging, new priorities. What people are relying on is expertise and evidence, kindness, compassion, healing and love. Gradings in Sats or a phonics check test or the number of 8s or 9s you score at GCSE have faded from our list of priorities, as have Ofsted schedules and grades. We have reverted to the judgements of teachers to assess the outcomes for children and the idea of a new baseline test in September is laughably irrelevant.

We have been forced into taking more time for each other and to appreciate the simple things in life, like smiles, spring sunshine and birdsong. Never again should we race through our days guzzling the planet’s valuable resources. Never again should we allow our schools to be places where we push ourselves and our children through a ridiculously paced curriculum stuffed full of irrelevant learning. Never again should we sacrifice the mental health and wellbeing of staff or children in order to feed the machine of test scores and accountability systems. The old system was making us ill; a global pandemic has helped us to understand how sick we were before the coronavirus.

If we can recreate an education system and a world that values the breadth and range of human brilliance, fosters a love of learning, encourages responsible stewardship of our planet and places love and kindness at the centre of how we live, work and learn, then some good will have come out of these dark and scary times.

Siobhan Collingwood is headteacher of Morecambe Bay Community Primary School, Lancashire