It seems as if we’ve just had the first weekend in ages where there hasn’t been some big announcement about schools pre-empted by the weekend newspapers.

Ironic, really, because now would be a pretty good time to be getting some detail out to schools about what September might look like.

Having abandoned the plan of having everyone back in school for a month before the summer, it would be good to know what vision the government has for the longer term.

Schools and teachers are well used to thinking in these terms.

Summer dramas

As soon as the summer resignation deadline has passed and school returns for the final half term, we know that talk of sports days and leavers’ assemblies will be interspersed with the quite gossip of which teachers are changing year group and who is getting the dreaded Year 2 group as they move into Year 3.

As soon as teachers know where they are, attention turns to the children.

There’ll be discussions with the current classteacher about who are the ones to watch out for, and playground duty takes on a new importance as you start to ask every child who’s up to mischief which class they’re in at the moment.

Hoping for the best

As with so much else this year, everything will be different.

We’ve started making plans for September in our school, but who knows whether September is when we’ll see them put into action. In the absence of any other information, we’ve had to go for it and hope for the best.

So, we have a staff team in place, plans for each year group and good intentions for a curriculum for the year. But what of the children?

As a junior school, we have the hurdle of how to induce the former Year 2 pupils into junior school ways, despite the fact that they’ve not been in school for some time.

For infants and primaries, the prospect of bringing a whole new cohort into school for the first time must seem like an enormous challenge under the current circumstances.

Some things don’t change, of course: transition will be as much about reassuring parents as it will children, and so every school now has to work out what transition and transfer look like for them.

Video welcomes

We’ve had several months to get the hang of video recordings and posting them online now, so for us, video will be a big part of how we try to reach the children joining us in September, but also to reconnect with those who haven’t been able to return to us this term.

It won’t be the same as a transition day in your new classroom, but at least it starts to make the connection.

For new pupils - and their parents - we’ll probably even include a video about how we start and end the day.

Moving to a new school is confusing enough as it is, but many families won’t have visited us for almost a year by the time September rolls around, so a chance to see the way in and the classroom will hopefully be welcome.

We’ll also offer an opportunity to ask questions remotely, that we can answer - hopefully - via video or calls. However much we’ve planned for things, there are always questions that parents or children have that take us by surprise.

All the while, we have got the important work of saying farewell to our Year 6 pupils and preparing them for their next steps and maybe even saying goodbyes and hellos to staff changing schools.

It’s a strange few weeks ahead, but we’ve got this.

Michael Tidd is headteacher at East Preston Junior School, in West Sussex. He tweets @MichaelT1979