My step counter tells me I’m averaging more than 20,000 steps per day. This is in large part down to the fact that I have three primary-age children, and a staggered start for them all in a local primary within walking distance.

This year my youngest is taking his first steps into school, joining the same primary that his two older sisters attend. When I first read about staggered starts, I felt sick at the thought of six potential pick-ups and drop-offs, as well as my own job. 

Fortunately, my local primary school has staggered by surname. This has meant that, from today, I can deposit all three of them together, albeit at an earlier time than usual. 

Schools reopening: staggered start times

The past two weeks have been a logistical challenge, to say the least. My youngest was doing a variety of settling-in sessions, and my two daughters’ initial reintegration days were on separate days - though on the same days as their brother’s shorter sessions.

I’m fortunate in that I could call on family to look after whichever child wasn’t involved in the journeys to and from school on those days. So I upped my step count alone, as I did the requisite multiple pick-ups and drop-offs solo in the meteorological educational default setting of “torrential”, which everyone knows is statutory for the beginning and end of every school day. 

I currently have spreadsheets printed and stuck to cupboard doors, to help me remember the myriad different changes of routine and requirements for PE kits, drop-off points and collection times. 

Despite these, I still turned up at school this morning 10 minutes too early, and with one child panicking, as she was convinced it was a PE day, even though it wasn’t on the spreadsheet. (It wasn’t a PE day.)

The school day shifting on its axis

And I’m lucky. I get to work very flexibly, work from home an awful lot and also work part-time. This has enabled me to navigate the staggered starts and to ensure that I can be there for as many as possible. As a family, we didn’t need wraparound care before lockdown, and so haven’t had the additional challenges of finding suitable before- and after-school childcare, which I know is the hot topic of conversation among almost all parents. 

But the staggered-start arrangements were never going to be received with rapturous applause, fanfares and ticker-tape celebratory parades. School times and associated wraparound care have been part of the working patterns of the nation for decades. Siblings have always arrived together, and there have usually been multiple options for clubs, after-school activities and childcare. 

What we have now is the school day shifting on its axis and throwing everything we used to know off-kilter. Parents are struggling to navigate multiple drop-off and pick-up times, which were finely balanced, to say the least, even before lockdown or staggered starts. 

Whether schools carve up staggered starts by surname or by year group, there is one thing guaranteed: someone is going to be annoyed or inconvenienced by the decision. And that someone might equally be the staff working in education themselves, who have their own children or caring commitments. 

Teachers with parenting commitments

It is simply impossible to be in more than one place at one time. And, if we are having to accommodate new ways of starting and ending our school working days, then we need to help our staff navigate and adjust to these when they have their own caring or parenting commitments to which they need to respond. 

Of course, no school will have sat down deliberately to inconvenience as many staff, pupils and families as possible. Schools are in an impossible position, and every school I know has spent hours poring over plans, suggestions, reworks, edits and adjustments to any of their staggered start and end times. 

This is all going to feel like an uphill trudge for many, for what will probably be quite a while. We must, therefore, ensure that we offer our school staff as much flexibility as possible to respond to the impact of staggered starts on their own families.

This situation definitely won’t be solved by insisting that our staff work in the same rigid format that they have for many years. Just as we adjusted the way we worked during lockdown, we still need to offer a degree of “flex during flux” as we attempt to reopen and run our schools in a way we never have before. 

Wrangling the throng

As we navigate the challenges of staggered starts, it is important not to lose sight of the benefits. My children’s drop-off and pick-ups are so much calmer, quieter and slicker, as there are fewer families, cars and pavement miniature scooters vying for position.

The calm start and end to the day has meant that, instead of a frantic mass of rushing bodies and badly parked cars, friends have been greeted, roads have been crossed safely, staff have had the time for longer morning greetings, and the whole day has begun and ended much more gently. 

Unless you’ve recently wrangled in the throng of a few hundred primary-school parents, toddlers, pushchairs, scooters and prams in the school playground at the end of a long school day, you can’t appreciate the calm and quiet of a staggered collection. Not having to avoid your shins being rammed by a wayward preschooler on a scooter on a daily basis is a true and unexpected delight of a staggered start.

But we are at the beginning of this journey of adjustment. I may be averaging 20,000 steps per day, but our school leaders and staff will easily be matching that with the number of decisions they are trying to make, surrounding how we can do so effectively and keep our schools functioning.

There are no simple steps to solving this staggeringly difficult challenge. All we can do is our best, one step at a time, and try to support each other as we navigate what is one of the biggest organisational shifts to our days in recent decades. 

Emma Turner is the research and CPD lead for Discovery Schools Trust, Leicestershire. She tweets @Emma_Turner75