I’m sure I can’t be alone, but I have to admit to having been completely unprepared for Covid-19.

When we were told that schools had to close, I fully expected it to all be over by Easter. Not for the first time in my working life was I the holder of false optimism. By the time of the announcement, I had already been at home for a week after one of the boys was kept off school with a temperature and a persistent cough and, following the advice that I had given to everyone else, I needed to self-isolate. To this day, we have no idea whether he (or, subsequently, the rest of the mild symptom-suffering family) had the coronavirus. Although we shall never know for sure, looking at things from the relatively virus-free Highlands, it now seems unlikely.

To add to the general confusion of the first weeks, I was rushed to hospital one evening with chest pains. It was a thoroughly surreal experience: being hooked up to various machines in my bedroom by paramedics in full hazmat kits, then being rushed to Raigmore and sent in the back door because I had a sniffle. Five hours in A&E later, I was diagnosed with costochondritis - an inflammation of the cartilage around the ribs, which, inconveniently, has similar symptoms to a heart attack.

Back at home, the guilt racked up as the Easter break approached and staff in school struggled with teacher and pupil absence, desperately trying to get seniors to finish whatever work they could as the indecision about what would happen with qualifications continued. While I helped as best I could with remote leadership and management, guidance changed day to day about what we should be doing and how to prepare for the online learning to come. Faced with a three-week period in which to enact ideas that would normally have formed a three-year plan, Chromebooks, usernames and passwords were triple-checked to ensure a head start if things did not return to normal after the holidays.

Key-worker hubs were set up over the Easter holidays to cater for the children of NHS workers and others who were required to keep the country running. As we were one of the few places where the wi-fi network could keep up with the drain caused by 90 per cent of the country’s population being online all day every day, I thought volunteering to spend a couple of days a week looking after other people’s children would be a good move.

With the holidays over and no sign of a return to school, we moved into full-time online learning. I set up a lovely new, somewhat cramped office in the corridor by the front door and scheduled endless Google Meets and Microsoft Teams meetings (some of which were interrupted by cries of “You’re not my teacher, you’re my mummy!” from the homeschooling in the kitchen), one unhappy side-effect of which was a series of hitherto unknown headaches.

Staff set up Google Classrooms for all their students, and I foolishly asked to be added to them all. Almost 200 classrooms later, I was inundated with automatic reminders of assignments that I had to hand in on anything ranging from writing a piece of music in a Renaissance style to completing a reflective piece from a Jacobite soldier on the eve of Culloden. And on Friday afternoons, we finished the week with a staff quiz, which, after repeated failures, I eventually won when Brian, the music teacher, took pity on me and included a music round on heavy metal instead of boy bands.

Over the weeks and months, teaching staff tried valiantly to get students to engage with the work set for them while student support chased up reluctant learners, offering extra help and support with varying degrees of success. Despite minor victories with individual students, teaching staff became increasingly disillusioned with the brave new online world and, while never giving up, there was a growing frustration about the amount of engagement from many students - including some who did no work at all from the beginning of lockdown until the summer holidays. While for some this was not entirely unexpected, it was still very difficult keeping staff motivated when they were working hard to provide innovative and varied tasks and were greeted with radio silence. Concerns over the widening gap on our return were uppermost in everyone’s minds.

Meanwhile, there were other battles with safeguarding issues. Right from the start, we had been concerned about our vulnerable children and how we would maintain contact with them while out of school. Located in a catchment with high levels of deprivation and with a number of families who struggle at the best of times, we were constantly worried about how some parents were going to cope with the loss of work, stretched family ties and children forced together in cramped accommodation for weeks on end.

We set up robust systems to keep in touch with students and make sure everything was OK, with repeated phone calls, texts and emails and, in certain situations, home visits to keep contact. From the pastoral side, it became obvious very quickly that a number of parents were struggling with their own mental health, and that it was going to be very difficult indeed for them to get their children to engage with online work. However, through the incredibly hard work of our guidance team and deputes, we got through the months of not seeing our children, knowing they were safe and well.

One hugely positive consequence of this contact has been the relationships we have reformed and rekindled with parents and the wider community. Through our communications, they know that we have the best interests of their children at heart. The appreciative messages from parents thanking staff at all levels for their help and concern - and for delivering laptops, pens and paper, resources for art and music, and ingredients for recipes in home economics - have grown in number as time has gone on. I truly believe that, because of this, we shall return with an increased sense of community and shared purpose when we get back to school.

So, as all of Scotland prepares for an earlier-than-usual start to the school year next week, what will that return look like and what will be the long-term effects of the experience we have just endured?

There will, without a doubt, be many different gaps - both educationally and pastorally - to fill. I think it is fair to say, at least from the point of view of my own school, that online learning has been an almost unqualified failure. While there has been the occasional student whose anxiety has been lifted through their absence from school and who has enjoyed their classes being on the internet, for the vast majority this has not been the case. More than ever, it has become apparent that education and learning is a social endeavour and does not work without the face-to-face contact and developed relationships brought to bear by our excellent staff. One consequence has been that, in many a student survey, the comment “I did not realise I would miss my teachers as much as I have” has been repeated from unexpected mouths. To build on this will be a major aim over the coming year.

As well as this recognition from students (and their parents) of the importance of formal schooling, there is a growing recognition among staff about the need for a greater understanding of the difficulties many of our students face on a day-to-day basis. Having kept everyone up to date on things that have been happening in our communities, we know more about our catchment area than we ever did. More importantly, the desire to know and understand more is evident - this is one genie we don’t want to put back in the bottle.

Finally, it will be interesting to see if major changes that are being called for on a national level will come to anything. In particular, the current debates about the value of exams need to keep going in the face of an undoubtedly conservative stance from the Scottish Qualifications Authority. This week’s “exam” results day, of course, came in a unique year when there were no exams. And if the use of teacher professional judgment instead can be shown to succeed - and there is no reason why it shouldn’t - then surely we can find a better way to recognise the achievements of our students. Increasingly, employers see little value in qualifications based on exams; this view is shared by the students who have to take them and question such an archaic means of assessment. We shall need to have a serious look at who to convince in order to find a better system.

Above all, we return to school next week with a renewed sense of purpose and solidarity among the staff body. We have come together so much over the past few months, sharing successes, failures and frustrations at the ever-shifting guidance and advice, crying and laughing in equal measure and talking more than we have done for years. We have supported each other (and our students and parents) through some very dark days, but have emerged stronger and keener to get on with the new school session - however it may look - and to embrace the changes to come.

John Rutter is headteacher at Inverness High School

This article originally appeared in the 7 August 2020 issue under the headline “Out of the dark days, we emerge stronger”