Across the country, young people have returned to education. Vaccines are rolling out, masks are being worn, teachers are assessing grades and, according to government plans, we may just have a summer of 2021 that begins to slowly but permanently banish the spectre of Covid-19 from all our lives.

In a flurry of good intentions and positivity, what will become of the changes we have all had to make for the past 18 months?

In educational terms, I have been a close-up witness to a natural disaster rather than a participant. I have watched teachers and leaders alike struggle through the most profound changes to education in generations, responding to challenge and crisis time and again, with astonishing resilience and always focusing on what is most important, the success and futures of their learners. In true bystander fashion, part of me wishes I had been there in the trenches to lend a hand and part of me is relieved I haven’t been involved. 

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Of course, the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) has been involved, bringing together a range of activities and training to support teachers at this difficult time, through our #ETFSupportsFE campaign, and adapting our offer to suit the needs of an almost exclusively online and remote teaching workforce. We have been a part of this change, from the moment of lockdown to the last vestiges of public health restrictions curtailing lives, and we will support teachers and leaders to do the best they can, no matter the circumstances.

But as we reopen, what should we keep? To coin a phrase, before we throw the baby out with the bathwater, perhaps we need to work out which is which.

Should we continue with online delivery?

The enormous move to online teaching has proven, once and for all, that education can be delivered through virtual means. For many long-time converts, this is a cause for celebration and, clearly, there is much to be said for knowing, as a nation, that education doesn’t have to stop when a college or school is closed. However, has it proven that we should deliver online? Here the jury is possibly still out.

If you use virtual delivery to supplement or reimagine a face-to-face curriculum, gaining the best of both worlds, maybe the past year has been a chance to find a powerful new model of delivery. On the other hand, if your learners face digital disadvantage, struggle with internet access, and have no devices to support their learning, then the past year is a chapter they are only too eager to close, looking forward to getting back to a face-to-face world in which they can play a full part.

Similarly, the contortions of the national examination system in the past years will doubtless become, in many ways, a historical anomaly. While many voices are calling for us to use these two years of hiatus to establish genuinely different ways of grading and assessing our learners at the completion of a course, the likelihood of specification change in short order is fairly slim. However, we do have the option to learn the lessons - most effective preparation and mitigation for disruption, flexibility in modes of assessment where possible; these (among other things) we should perhaps still take forward.

In essence, we have all lived through an enormous social experiment. Some people have been experimented on a lot more than others - young people entering the further education system and those returning after a disrupted year are a long way up that list.

In a sector that has always been known for exceptional vocational and practical teaching and training, not being able to work face to face for months at a time is potentially even more damaging than for learners needing to stay engaged with a GCSE history class. For those who have struggled to stay motivated as they finished school, looking forward to a more interactive and physical learning experience at college, their loss of engagement is possibly more important than any specific loss of learning.

Teachers are seeing these and many other changes up close. They have learned huge lessons, as individuals and collectively, about things that work well, and we need to empower them and their leaders to make the best use of what we have found in this unique educational laboratory, otherwise much of what we have had to do in the past year is a wasted opportunity to learn about the future of education. What should we change? What should we keep? What support do learners need in the next decade that we never really noticed until now?

We face several interlinked challenges as we unlock our sector and begin to pick over what the best ways forward might be. At the heart of all of our decisions needs to be one intent - we should teach back better than before.

Paul Kessell-Holland is the Education and Training Foundation’s national head of T-level design and higher level education