I am angry and disappointed

Tonight I am stewing in my shed.

I have to admit, this blog has been written with a couple of JD and Cokes inside me, and after the farce that was the government briefing on Sunday 24th May 2020. So please excuse any waffled sentences, any spelling mistakes or ramblings of a tipsy head teacher!

I, alongside a whole range of people have worked exceptionally hard over the past couple of weeks. I always knew becoming a head teacher would be a tough job. I have worked my whole career with this in mind – I even pushed my head in my NQT year to give me a subject leadership role. The normal ups and downs of a school year clearly brings its own challenges, but they are usually interspersed with the amazing bits of our jobs – the children. This lock down has been tough – we are faced with the same crap x 1,000 but without any of the niceties of our jobs.

Since 10th May, school leaders up and down the country have had the unenviable task of trying to plan for what is safe for their communities and what the government require from us, as ultimately, we have to remember we are public servants and they are our employers. Politics does not come in to it. I have never been a Conservative voter, but for the majority of my teaching career they have been the controlling party and I have followed their directives diligently (although with the occasional gripe!) However, this said, they have completely lost my trust over the past few weeks.

Initially, the announcement of school closures on 18th March was shambolic. We were not given any advance notice or guidance or information. We were left in the dark and had to fumble our way through it. The incredible determination to get this right for our families made us all work solidly over the coming days to provide online learning opportunities and ways to communicate. The way we did this should have been celebrated. However, people in power (read Andrew Adonis) decided to criticise us, say we weren’t doing enough and that we should be ashamed that we are letting children down. This was picked up by the press, and I have never known a teacher bashing like it. We are easy targets – remembrr we do get 13 weeks holidays and work 9 – 3 - but nothing like this. It has been relentless.

As we were getting our routines and systems embedded our esteemed leader decided he would throw another spanner into the works. On Sunday 10th May, he decided to make the announcement that schools would be coming back to a number of pupils on 1st June – as long as certain conditions were met. This again was not communicated to us before the announcement. What sort of leadership does that to its team? I would never think of announcing a whole school initiative in front of the parents before working through it with my staff beforehand. Let that sink in to realise how put up on we have been.

I am under no illusions that Mr Johnson (I have always refused to call him Boris – that is his façade to confuse us) intended to do this. He needs to open the economy, and the only way to do this is provide child care for children, regardless of the safety. His saving grace was the fact that children are not as severely affected by this virus, so he can pontificate about how safe it is for kids, without one mention about how safe it is for staff, how the children may transmit the virus or the impact this will have on the wider community. This call was a win for him amongst the business leaders and people who want to get back to ‘normality’.

From that date, I have worked a minimum of 12 hour days, slept about 3 hours per night and have drawn up a number of plans. What did not help, is that we were given three weeks to plan, but the government decided not to give us any advice and guidance. However, when this did eventually come, I wish it hadn’t. It was at the best lacking in detail and condescending and at its worst downright confusing and scary. The cynic in me almost wants to say that they have published this guidance knowing children or staff will contract this disease, and therefore a proportion will die, but that is OK as it will allow the parents to go to work.

After wading through the plethora of guidance (I have given up on counting how many pieces and updates that there has been) I managed to complete a plan that allowed me to open my school and follow the government guidelines - I have even managed to buy lidded bins! I brought my staff with me, and we all agreed we can do this. We closed on Friday 22nd May, knowing we would have a week off and could then focus on doing what is right.

We managed to do this against a backdrop of negativity. Some loud voices in the press were calling us cowards, our education secretary Gavin Williamson accused us of making children miss out and Michael Gove, the bastion of sensibility that he is, stated that we would open schools if we “really care about children.” How dare that man, accuse our profession of not caring; it is the most disgusting thing you can say to an educator. We love our schools, we love our communities, we love our children and we want to do what is right. If a head teacher decides it is not safe for their school to come back, how dare that odious little weasel accuse them of not caring? We have more care in our little fingers than he has in his entire body; he only cares about himself.

Despite all of this, we all managed to come up with plans that fit our schools, but the government then decided to rain on our parade and throw another span. As the leader of a school, I had decided I was going to give myself three to four days off, be with my family, do some gardening and not do any work whatsoever. Unfortunately, the government decided to release its scientific evidence on Friday 22nd May. I read this in detail and could not believe what I was reading. The decision the government made had not been modelled, which was just astounding. The next stand out moment for me was that SAGE actually advised that schools should run on a rota basis, preferably a week on and week off. This was categorically discouraged in our guidance. How dare the government claim that their decisions have been based on the best scientific advice when they have ignored it or not modelled for it!

I spent Friday night lamenting my decision to not be brave enough to fight back against the government by opening my school to the required year groups. I am in a position where my school is small, and could just about squeeze the children in within the socially distancing guidelines. We have been creative with our space, our staff and squeezed every last drop of resources to the maximum. We have spent over 2% of our total school budget on making it safe (I hope I can claim this back, because otherwise I will have to explain to the ESFA why I have a deficit), and school will not be the same for the returning children, but we felt we could make it work.

I managed to switch off a little bit on Saturday, did some gardening, went for a walk with my little boy, played aeroplanes and dragons (two things that don't normally mix together, bit it worked) and generally tried to be myself again – oh yes I also had my pint of JD and Coke! I even tried to ignore the Dominic Cummings debacle, thinking any sensible prime minister would encourage a resignation. Amazingly, I also managed to sleep for 5 hours on Saturday night, which has been a record for the past fortnight. I woke up Sunday morning, went for a stroll in the woods with my wife and boy and was actually feeling good and was planning a lovely Monday activity with my family.

Then my phone bleeped… the Early Years guidance came through.

The farce began again. All my plans were in tatters. There is no way I could bring Nursery and Reception back with these new rules. I frantically sent emails to my chair of governors and EYFS teacher (breaking my own rule of not contacting staff at the weekend about work) to find their views. Do we have enough space for the requisite 2.3 metres? Can we staff it appropriately and give people breaks? Can we keep the groups of 8 from mixing? So many questions, not enough answers. I drafted my letter to parents to apologise that our plans have changed, and have organised an online meeting to discuss this with them. After that, I decided to leave it until tomorrow, and thought I would sit down and watch the briefing to see what would happen – mainly expecting a remorseful Mr Johnson saying he understood why Dominic Cummings did what he did, but it did contravene the guidelines that we needed to adhere to and he has accepted his resignation.

What transpired was atrocious. Firstly, Cummings was excused. I will not go into that – I could rant for hours about how his actions were wrong and dangerous. What upset me most, was the way Mr Johnson tried to deflect the attention of this PR disaster by using us. He tried to turn the message into ‘schools are opening on the first, aren’t we great for doing this’. The fact that he even said “we have worked together” to do this. No we haven’t. Let’s spell this out. Hardworking and dedicated educators up and down the country have made excruciatingly hard decisions for their schools despite you. We would have honestly been better without you. This message tonight also puts pressure on us - it has almost told parents ‘we are safe, expect your school to open’ even though the final call isn’t until Thursday. The final straw for me came when he had the nerve to say he has consulted with education staff and that more consultations will happen this week. Sod that – there has been no communication whatsoever and I do not expect any this week either – just more contradictory advice.

I cannot describe how badly let down I feel by the government. I know that they are making decisions of life and death, and need to keep the economy going, but that does not excuse putting money before people. It does not excuse putting school leaders in impossible positions. It does not excuse lying to the public. It does not excuse making the science up as you go along. It does not excuse ignoring the scientific guidance. All I want is for the government to be honest and use the information available to make the best decision. If the decision is controversial and with risk, explain why it has been made, and what the risk is. If they have said, “We are opening schools on 1st June. We know that there is a risk attached to this, and the R rate could increase by 0.2. However, if we do not open the economy more widely, the impact could be X, Y or Z” we would possibly be more understanding.

I have to live with the decisions I make and I have followed the guidance as best I can. My worst nightmare is that I have made a bad call, open my school more widely and somebody contracts the virus and potentially has serious health issues. I will never forgive myself if that happens. I know that I could not have done any more, but that guilt would live with me forever.

To finish off, supposedly, the worst thing a teacher can say to you is “I am not angry, but I am disappointed”. I disagree with that after tonight, I am angry and disappointed. Know this Mr Johnson and your cronies, you have most educators up and down the country angry and disappointed with you and we have had enough.