Opening Schools in Difficult Times

There is a great deal of talk about returning to school after lockdown, school closure, and with the virus still prevalent. However, how about opening a new school? Crazy or smart?

What are the positives of opening a school in places where the pandemic is still running its course (i.e. nearly everywhere)? Considering I have been working in a school already and experienced (and learnt from the experience of others) the provision of online/home learning and how to handle the government restrictions imposed on reopening, then here's the start of a list of positives I just brainstormed:

• Having learnt about dealing with restrictions with school closure and reopening, we can now build these into our new school’s processes as part of a ‘new normal’.
• Online support for parents, learners and teachers can be there from the start
• Starting as you mean to go on (in my case, being very clear that we are developing holistic learners for example)
• We can design our online programme as part of learning and teaching so that core aspects are there whether the school is operating normally or not.
• In wisely developing our online teaching and learning programme, we have the basis of our outreach programme – we can partner with other schools and organisations easily.
• We need to attract new learners so then we need to design attractive and effective courses and provisions that attract kids and new families (More about that elsewhere)
• Employing exactly the right number of people to operate effectively in lockdown, then expanding for opening gradually offsets costs. Same for building costs – maybe staff numbers can be optimal, you can attract a good core team and perhaps you don’t even need much of a building for a while! Somewhere in here lies efficiency.
• Getting your online learning right so that it becomes an integral part of what you do even after the pandemic (here we are not saying that online learning replaces face-to-face learning but that it can, when necessary, and is still a part of what you do even when it is not necessary) – because your online learning provision has its benefits

So what do you think? What would opening a new school mean for you as a school owner, principal, teacher, learner, parent? What would you want to add to the list? What would you want to edit? What would a list of negatives look like?

Stay Safe and Cool,

Robert Thorn

Re-Founding Director

Developing Real Learners

www.developingreallearners.org