After a year of living with a pandemic and all the restrictions that has entailed, I worry that so much has been written about “lost learning” in children’s educational journeys.

It is perfectly true that online learning has been a hideously poor substitute for in-school learning, regardless of what government ministers tried to imply. Fortunately, it would now appear that we are not sleepwalking into a digital revolution where teachers are replaced by pre-programmed automatons.

The idea that lost learning can somehow be made up by extra-long days and reduced holidays is a ridiculous one. Children, who have suffered the most isolated year of their lives, are now told, almost daily, that they are behind, that their future incomes will be impacted, that they are in some way in danger of becoming a lost generation. All at a time when we are most concerned about mental health and the challenges that have come from being locked away for extended periods.

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The answer is not suddenly to instigate summer schools and enter into some draconian contract where we work children harder and longer - that would be entirely counterproductive. Indeed, it could be construed as punishment.

However, what the coronavirus has done is to create an opportunity to reassess our educational model, to reimagine how we do things.

The school calendar is my biggest priority for change.

I am in the process of consulting all stakeholders at my school on a new, more sustainable set of session dates. This will mean that the school will be open every month of the year, but with the same number of teaching days as is currently the case. 

My suggestion is seven phases of teaching and learning, with no holiday period longer than five weeks and no shorter than two.

Each “phase” would be no longer than seven weeks and no shorter than four.

Such a revised set of dates would create a more sustained and human approach to learners learning and teachers teaching.

So, how might this look in practice?

Phase 1: Mid-July to mid-August (25 teaching days)

Phase 2: Early September to mid-October (30 teaching days)

Phase 3: Early November to mid-December (35 teaching days)

Phase 4: Early January to mid-February (35 teaching days)

Phase 5: Early March to mid-April (30 teaching days)

Phase 6: Early May to end of May (20 teaching days)

Phase 7: Early June to end of June (20 teaching days)

This calendar provides 185 teaching days (five more than is currently the case in my school) with an opportunity for five in-service days.

It means no long summer holiday where children “forget” what they have learned and it is more sustainable in creating a high-impact, high energy teaching and learning experience.

More frequent - but shorter - holidays allow for important downtime, thereby reducing those mind-wrecking 10-week teaching terms.

The notion that more teaching time is the answer to our lockdown “loss of learning” debate is deluded. It is not the amount of time that is the determining factor in academic achievement; it is what you do with that time.

And, personally, I fancy running a school where school’s in for much of the summer.

Rod Grant is headteacher at Clifton Hall School in Edinburgh. This is a version of a piece originally published as a blog post