Dear 2020 me,

I don’t want to panic you, but I think there are a few things you ought to know about the year ahead that might make your life a little easier. The joke you made this week about “It’ll all be over by Easter” doesn’t even ring true one year later, let alone in reference to the holiday you’re looking forward to in a fortnight’s time.

For a start, let’s talk about that holiday. Now’s the time to be grateful that you didn’t book the holiday you talked about at Christmas. Not only will it not be a good time to get away, but you’ll also be finding yourself rather busy. Your school will be open, and you’ll be staffing it. 

No one will quite tell you that you have to, and no one will explain how to do it, but the expectation will be there all the same. And, like so often in the year ahead, you can expect things to be announced to the public before you hear anything about it in school.

Covid and schools: Turning plans upside down

In fact, the final weekend before the national lockdown is probably a fairly good indicator of the way things are going to be. If I remember rightly, that’s when all of your plans were turned upside down. 

Having told staff on Friday that they should all come in on Monday, by Sunday night that felt foolish and ill-advised. Get used to that: you’re going to find yourself second-guessing a lot of decisions over the next 12 months.

On the positive side, you will be able to keep your word to your Year 6 pupils. When you promised that it wouldn’t be their last time at the school, and that they would get a proper leavers’ event of some sort, you hoped that it would be the normal routine by then. Sorry to say that things won’t quite work out like that - but Year 6 will at least be back with you by July, and you’ll be able to do something to mark the end of their time here.

It won’t be quite like that for the other year groups. Some of those children won’t walk through the doors again for nearly six months - and, when they do, it’s quite likely that they’ll be walking through different doors. 

School routines completely overhauled

If you think the handwashing of the past few weeks has been a bit of a faff, you’ve seen nothing yet. Prepare yourself for school routines to be completely overhauled. And don’t bank on things being back to normal by the time even Year 5 end up leaving, let alone before that.

The good news is that the staff are with you. It’ll start off feeling like you’re part of some great national effort. That will pass, but you have a good team and they’ll keep adapting. In fact, the next 12 months will only serve to demonstrate that old saying that a school is not about the buildings - it’s the people who inhabit it who make the school community.

Over the next 12 months, staff will happily sign up to cover groups they’ve not taught before, move break duties, teach lessons to a video screen, learn whole new computer systems, hold meetings in the playground, create productions with online audiences, come into work in the depths of the crisis when the whole nation is told to stay at home, and somehow still manage to laugh, smile and make children feel like everything will be OK. 

By this time next year, they’ll be sticking cotton buds up their nostrils twice a week just to ensure children can keep learning. Just don’t mention the word “bubble” too soon: you’ll be living with that for a long time.

Michael Tidd is headteacher at East Preston Junior School in West Sussex. He tweets @MichaelT1979