This is the shortest school summer holiday that anyone in Scotland will ever have experienced - a mere five weeks in some parts of the country. Exam results are already looming next week and, just a week later, the long-trailed date of 11 August for schools returning has raced over the horizon. To many, it will feel as if they never really had a break.
By now, we’ll have had the definitive statement from education secretary John Swinney - it was due yesterday - on if and how there will be a full reopening of schools. This whole summer, students and schools have been on tenterhooks, awaiting confirmation of what will be happening when schools reopen.
The sense of limbo has been unsettling, whatever your role in education. There were the heads whose plans for blended learning were rendered redundant (or were they?) just as schools broke up for the summer, and the teachers who have spent the whole holiday wondering how close they’ll be allowed to stand to pupils and colleagues. Then there were the many children fretting about whether they should wear a mask in school and who their teacher was going to be (something they usually find out long before the summer break).
People are craving certainty. Adults and children alike can be remarkably resilient when they know what they’re dealing with and how long it’ll last - just let us know when school will get back to normal, they implore, and we’ll stick it out until then.
The problem is, no one can truthfully answer that.
There was consternation among many parents and politicians on 14 June when it was widely reported that Swinney had suggested there may be no return to normal in 2020-21, as people digested the idea that blended learning could last all year.
Surveying the reaction, the Scottish government tightened up the messaging and, the next day, first minister Nicola Sturgeon insisted that a year of blended learning was “absolutely not” the plan.
The tone may have changed overnight but, in truth, nothing really changed over those two days in mid-June - and little has changed since then. This will be a year of uncertainty, whatever approaches are deployed by policymakers and educators in the months ahead.
A “full” return of schools in August is something of a misnomer. However many staff and students are in school at one time, every lesson, movement and social interaction will be guided by Covid-19 and whatever restrictions it demands at that time. Exams will be prepared for in the knowledge that they could be suddenly cancelled; children will meet their friends in the playground once again, but aware that another lockdown could be just around the corner.
We are all getting a harsh lesson that, in the midst of a global pandemic, the greatest certainty is uncertainty. Even if school returns to something that appears close to “normal”, there is no telling the psychological impact, even the trauma, that will linger.
That said, some clarity is coming. Soon, we’ll know what the “exam” results are like in the first year that exams were ever cancelled, and a week later, for what will be the first time in five months for many, teachers and pupils will be back inside the familiar walls of their schools. In education, staff and students have had to get used to constantly shifting goalposts and to the strange experience of hastily arranged learning from home, so any semblance of familiarity will be a tonic.
There remains, however, huge uncertainty about what staff and students in Scottish education will face in the year ahead. The best policy, surely, is to be honest about that - to be aware that any apparent return to normality is built on the most fragile of foundations.
This article originally appeared in the 31 July 2020 issue under the headline “The only thing certain about this school year is uncertainty”
