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1/
Over the last turbulent ten days I’ve had the honour of working with some of our incredible primary headteachers. Here’s what ten days of January has looked like for them:
Over the last turbulent ten days I’ve had the honour of working with some of our incredible primary headteachers. Here’s what ten days of January has looked like for them:
2/ INSTEAD of giving HTs time to plan and organise work beyond the Christmas break, the government cocked up the start of the term, sending children & staff in on day 1, then announcing a lockdown for day 2.
3/ HOWEVER, HTs reversed their carefully thought out plans, sorted out safe provision for vulnerable & critical workers’ children, to make sure their schools were inclusive, safe families.
4/ INSTEAD of providing a succinct critical worker list which would help HTs communicate compassionately with their families, the government labelled most employees key workers and sewed confusion over how nurseries are run.
5/ HOWEVER, HTs, supported brilliantly by their teams welcomed a HUGE number of children in, and only then attempted to communicate tough messages to parents about limiting numbers, to keep children and staff safe.
6/ INSTEAD of dealing with the electronic exclusion and food poverty that the government has overseen for years, they failed to promptly support primary schools with laptops or parcels or vouchers.
7/ HOWEVER, HTs lobbied, begged, borrowed and got angry on their kids behalf, to make sure that our poorest children ate and that far more kids than last year could work successfully from home.
8/ INSTEAD of supporting schools with best practice advice around home-learning, the government suggested that parents who were unhappy should complain to Ofsted.
9/ BUT GUESS WHAT, by this point parents realise who they really trust & decided to listen to their child's HT. Parents told HTs what home-learning was working well and what could be better. Their only message to Ofsted was to leave HTs alone...
10/ ...because it's the HTs who actually know what they're doing, and care about our kids. And INSTEAD of being bloody livid, or giving in to despair, for the last ten days primary school HTs have simply delivered with courage, creativity, humility and, with an dash of style.
