“Pass it on,” advises Hector, the equally flawed and adored central character in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys. 

During a global pandemic, and when it comes to guiding our own students and keeping them safe, this isn’t a particularly wise piece of advice.

But we’re going to need to think of some new ideas when it comes to drama if we are to ensure that it continues into the next academic year - this is a challenge that cannot be put off. 

Coronavirus: How can we teach drama with social distancing?

Whereas normally at this time of year our collective thoughts might usually be turning towards a beach holiday and catching up on a paperback best-seller by the pool, there are more pressing issues that must be acknowledged.

What’s going to happen in September? How on earth are we going to teach drama with social distancing in place? 

Answer: I’m really not sure, and no one can give us a definite answer. Part of the problem is that we don’t know what the landscape will look like in September.

It’s a certainty, however, that it’s not going to be business as usual, and students won’t be able to have physical contact with one another, in close proximity, in drama studios. 

Practical considerations

Side-stepping the logistical problems posed by scheduling and timetabling, it looks as though there will be real limitations on what practical work we might be able to explore.

Open Drama has produced a really helpful guide as to how practical lessons might work with social distancing in place, and I’ve seen some real ingenuity, with teachers planning all sorts of novel and socially distant systems.

But I can’t help feeling that we need to stop trying to recreate what we did before lockdown in a set of circumstances that are so hugely different. 

I won’t be devoting a significant amount of time to any planning on this side of the summer holidays. 

As we’ve seen, all the official guidance to schools could change another 30 times, and our best-laid plans would be as useless as Juliet’s nurse. 

Instead, some loose planning for the first fortnight of the autumn term and the chance to see what the land looks like in September is probably best for our sanity levels.

An online future?

Even so, what options does that leave us with for the students who will be in school in September?

My instinct is that anything we are planning for face-to-face sessions needs to be able to be delivered remotely in the first instance. 

If there’s a chance that the work can be adapted to fit a real-time situation, then that’s great, but online learning looks like it’s here for a little while longer. 

The work we deliver might start to look a little more like “theatre studies” than drama, but is that such a bad thing? 

For many of us, the bigger problems are posed by starting or continuing work with GCSE and A-level groups.

Assessment clarity

Some of our students were at a critical stage on their pathway to an externally awarded qualification and were midway through work that was physical, tactile and exploratory. 

We cannot just immediately revert to how we were working before, but nor do I think that it’s for drama teachers to find the solution here.

It’s great to hear that the main exam boards are now working with Ofqual to be able to offer some guidance as to how we might best proceed with these anxious students. 

For anxious drama teachers across the country, a swift response would be hugely helpful.

It’s clear that there is still real uncertainty for our corner of the profession, and that we need to be able to prepare for a range of different routes in September.

One thing that we shouldn’t do is to try and recreate life before lockdown in our drama studios. “Can we not have before? Can we not?” asks Louise, in Jim Cartwight’s Road. For now, no - we can’t. 

But we owe it to our students to start thinking about how we can deliver drama next term in a way that is creative, inspiring, fun, interactive and - above all - safe. 

Matthew Nichols is head of drama at a school in Manchester. As well as having over a decade’s experience in senior roles at exam boards, he is a series editor for Methuen Drama. His first book, The Drama Teacher’s Survival Guide, is out later this year. He tweets @matthew_drama