Ms Clarke has been headteacher of St Anon’s Secondary School for the past 10 years. She is a well-educated, experienced woman with a cracking track record in education management.

Ms Clarke cares for her staff and nurtures her students. Everyone respects and admires Ms Clarke as a rational, intelligent and forward-thinking leader.

Recently, however, Ms Clarke has been facing a daily battle, with conflicting information from the government and a rising tide of unrest from the families and staff in her school community. 

We find her sitting at her desk, in her office, on the school premises. Her phone is ringing.

She picks it up. “Yes?”

“I have a call from a Mr De Niall from the Department for Education, who would like a word.”

“OK. Thanks, Sally - put him through… Hello?”

“Ms Clarke? Good morning. My name is Ian De Niall, and I wanted to have a quick chat if it’s convenient.”

“Yes, of course. How may I help you?”

Coronavirus: How can a school be both closed and open?

“Well, it has come to our attention that you have been quite vocal in the local press about schools being closed during the current lockdown, and I have been tasked with exploring some options with you in order to move the situation forward in a more orderly and less…umm, shall we say, reactionary manner?”

“I’m not sure what you mean, Mr De Niall. I merely took part in an interview for my local newspaper in which I expressed concern about the current numbers of children attending school despite rising Covid cases in the Normalton area.”

“Yes. Precisely.”

“Precisely what, Mr De Niall?”

“Well, you see, Ms Clarke, it is very unhelpful to our attempted management of the current situation for you to be implying that schools are, in fact, open when we are telling everyone that they are, in fact, shut.”

“But they aren’t shut, Mr De Niall.”

“Well, they are, Ms Clarke. We shut them on 5 January, after making everyone go back to school the day before, because we hadn’t quite made our minds up about how serious the situation was. The prime minister would be most disheartened to learn that his leadership was being challenged in such an underhand manner, and so I am contacting headteachers across the country to…umm, encourage them to…umm, potentially retract any unwarranted remarks they may have publicly made in order to appear more…umm, compliant with the national cause and to reassure the general public that, in fact, we have done everything within our capability to control the virus’ spreading.”

“Forgive me, Mr De Niall, but I fail to see how you can expect me to deny the fact that - despite the alleged school closures - they are all up and running in order to accommodate key-worker children, vulnerable children and children with special educational needs.”

“But Ms Clarke, if you will simply listen to what I am saying, the schools are closed and everyone is now worrying about the continuation of education for this very reason. We closed the schools and now we are trying to find a way to open them without risking infection rates increasing yet again.”

“Are you hearing me, Mr De Niall? They are open. Some schools are functioning at 60 per cent occupancy. The number of children in schools during lockdown this year is as much as five times as high as last year. In order to accommodate that, I have to bring my staff in: teachers, admin, premises, catering. To all intents and purposes, we are a fully functioning school and we are not the only school doing this, Mr De Niall. All schools are doing this.”

“No, no, no, Ms Clarke. Please take a moment to gather yourself. If you listen to what I am saying, you will perhaps understand the situation better. We closed the schools to keep the infection rates under control. They are closed because we know that having them open would mean that children were potentially coming into contact with the virus and taking it home to their families and putting staff at increased risk.”

“Mr De Niall.” Ms Clarke pauses, takes a deep breath and looks briefly out of her window at the playground, where several children are standing two metres apart from one another. “I am telling you that my school is open and that, despite scientific advice that schools are not safe places to be, I am dealing with daily requests for yet more children to be allocated places, so that parents can go to work. You are telling me that all schools are closed. My question is this: how can a school be both open and closed?”

“Well, it can’t, Ms Clarke. Mainly as all schools are closed, so by definition your school is closed.”

“Right. I see. One question, Mr De Niall. You rang me today on the school landline. Why did you choose that number?”

“Because I knew this would be the best place to get hold of you.”

“Goodbye, Mr De Niall.”

Zoë Crockford is an art teacher at a secondary school in Bournemouth