Where might the following take place? A gaggle of five-year-olds is intensely debating what constitutes an appropriate monetary offering from the Tooth Fairy these days. One of their P1 classmates has just wandered in with what looks like the contents of a blackcurrant Fruit Shoot somehow soaked through her entire school uniform. A boy on the other side of the room has decided that now is a good time to carry out a meticulous inventory of the contents of his Tardis-like schoolbag. Meanwhile, requests to go to the toilet and shocked declarations that “I’ve got no kit in my bag!” are sporadically adding to the hubbub.
Amid the tumult before and after a school PE session, it is testament to the skill and resilience of teachers that any semblance of structured sport or physical activity happens at all. Yet, despite their best efforts, teachers find that large chunks of learning time evaporate amid the fraught efforts of pupils to get in and out of their PE kits.
Then along came Covid.
For all the chaos and anxiety unleashed by Covid, there were some silver linings for schools - and one we’ve heard time and again, with particular relevance to primary schools, was the idea of letting pupils come to school already wearing their kits on days when they have PE.
Schools have told us that this has saved up to 20 minutes per PE lesson. Factor that in over a school year and a whole lot of learning time has been recouped at a stroke. As a result, some schools are saying they will retain this practice after Covid-19 definitively moves into the history books.
What other Covid-related changes might schools hold on to? There was a big response when I asked that on Twitter earlier this week.
We heard of classrooms that are “so much more spacious” after Covid distancing rules prompted the removal of superfluous furniture and other clutter. There were approving murmurs, too, for schools where hand sanitiser remained ubiquitous, where new one-way systems had been kept and where staff and pupils now had more exit points from the building.
Online parents’ evenings also seemed popular - although not everyone is a fan - and greater emphasis on electronic communication generally was praised as a way of making schools more environmentally responsible. Some schools continued to add to the YouTube channels they set up during Covid, and there were hopes that recording meetings might make parent councils accessible to more families.
One parent was delighted that their son hadn’t had any homework since the pandemic - it had previously been a source of stress for the whole family - although the idea of abolishing homework seems likely to be more divisive.
A primary teacher said his school had continued with its “soft start” to the day, and even felt that some of the best learning happened in this “very relaxed, nurturing and flexible” period of play.
A secondary head, meanwhile, enthused about double periods of the same subject, with fewer transitions over the course of the day seen as a way of building in more learning time and reducing disruption.
Staggered school start times and morning and lunch breaks were more controversial, however. One primary head said different start and finish times reduced anxiety at drop-off and pick-up, and allowed time to talk to parents. But there was also a view that staggered breaks were “awful” for the noise they created while other pupils were still in lessons.
For one university education researcher, the biggest benefit of Covid-enforced innovation was clear: the explosion of outdoor learning during the pandemic had been healthy, fun and sparked all sorts of new opportunities to learn stuff.
Covid proved, like never before, that necessity is the mother of invention. And teachers, if they see something that has genuinely made a big difference, are right to push to keep it - whether or not Covid is at large.
Henry Hepburn is Scotland editor at Tes. He tweets @Henry_Hepburn
