The Covid pandemic has turned education upside down. However, maybe it provides the opportunity for wholescale reforms and the slaying of shibboleths that have existed for too long.
Covid-19 disruption came at a time when many calls for reform were gathering momentum anyway.
In Scotland, discontent over Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) resulted in calls for reform gathering pace. The RSA (also known as the Royal Society of Arts) facilitated “CfE 2.0” discussions, reigniting old issues and sparking new ideas.
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The Scottish Parliament think tank Scotland’s Futures Forum presented a report, Education 2030, just before the first Covid lockdown, and many of its recommendations happened in the first phase of the pandemic.
Most notably, community hubs became the focus for learning, IT provision increased in importance and wellbeing rose in prominence as a focus for education. As the Covid-induced qualifications crisis of 2020 undermined the “equity and excellence” claims of education policymakers, the likes of exam.scot emerged as a platform for debate on how assessment might change.
Coronavirus: A chance to change the school year
However, more fundamental changes are now possible if we are able to grapple with change in a way education has failed to do in the past. It has long been acknowledged that, in countries such as Scotland, the schools system and its format are modelled on a bygone era. The industrial model of western education was well critiqued by the late Sir Ken Robinson, while the structure of the school year is based upon historic agricultural patterns and working needs.
With the current crisis of when to “reopen schools” and how to ensure that students are able to complete their coursework (especially for exam and certificated courses), there is an opportunity to reshape education not just for this year but for a 21st-century world.
This year, for example, school Easter holidays could be brought forward to the last week in March whether or not schools are back, but only for one week. Class teaching would then resume in early April with another week of holiday possible in May. Such an approach could mean that exams (truncated or otherwise) would start in the last week in June and run until the end of the last week in July.
Whether this could be achieved or not would be largely determined by innovative thinking, willpower and leadership.
In the longer term, there could be a shortening of the disruptive and pedagogically poor long summer holiday, and holidays could be better spaced throughout the year.
And might we also look at when learning starts for students in schools each day? It is well known that starts of around 8.30am or 9am do not work well for education, but are intended instead to fit the needs of the economy. What time are students starting their learning at just now? What time would actually suit them biologically and pedagogically?
Putting learning and children back at the centre of a newly structured system could be one positive outcome of this crisis. However, at present it looks like the door of change is swinging slowly shut as conservatism and fear of significant longer-term - and genuinely impactful - change take hold.
John Low is a former headteacher and local authority officer in Perth and Kinross, who has guest lectured on leadership at the University of Aberdeen
Neil McLennan is senior lecturer and director of leadership programmes at the University of Aberdeen
