The trust deficit in England: emerging research evidence about school leaders and the pandemic

Abstract

RAPID COMMUNICATION'Some messages have just been sobbing': phone line helps headteachers with burden of Covid (Melissa Benn, The Guardian, April 17, 2021) DfE looks to spend another £800k on headteacher wellbeing and mental health support. (Freddie Whittaker, Schools Week, May 31, 2021) England has been living with Covid-19, through peaks and troughs, since March 2020. Hospitals, care staff and workers in utilities and the food chain have had to keep working, often in very risky conditions. School staff have also continued to work. During periods of hard lockdown, they provided face-to-face education for children of 'key workers' while also offering online learning to children and young people at home. When lock-downs eased, schools offered face-to-face teaching to all pupils.Policymakers see schools as integral to economic and social maintenance and recovery and have thus placed a high priority on education as a stable provision operating throughout a very long period of considerable uncertainty and instability. Because of rapidly changing levels of infection and scientific understandings of transmission and prevention measures, the government has adjusted, often at the last minute, the legal requirements around the opening and closing of schools in line with the various levels of lockdown. English school leaders have been in continued crisis management mode (Fotheringham et al. 2021).School leaders have been faced with challenges unimaginable prior to the pandemic. Because schools are a major site for virus transmission, leaders have had to pay particular attention to the management of staff, pupils and buildings (Beauchamp et al. 2021). At the same time as the curriculum had to be digitised and teaching moved largely online, they have had to adapt old and invent new, management procedures. Providing deep cleaning is an easier task than adequate ventilation in England's schools -many are run down and designed to keep the air and warmth in. The management of people, time and space are considerably harder. Pupils are now routinely placed into year-level 'bubbles' so that it is possible for only some of the schools to be quarantined if there is an outbreak. Schools must try to regulate movement in corridors, and avoid crowded playgrounds to avoid aerosol transmission. Masks were mandatory in secondary schools for most of the 2020-2021 school year. In early 2021, schools were integrated into local test-and-trace systems with routine lateral flow testing administered to both staff and students. The 2021-22 school year sees CO2 monitors promised but not delivered.The locus of some key decisions has shifted from the local level to the national. This is significant in a school system that has rhetorically placed local autonomy as the key to education reform. Schools

Unlocking education through relationship building: Identity and agency in English educational institutions during Covid‐19

“…Whilst there has been research on the changing nature of teachers' identities during the pandemic (Christensen et al, 2022;Kim et al, 2021;Mellon, 2022), this paper specifically looks at how institutional power structures and top-down management impacted on educators and how they in turn constructed their identity when reflecting on their experience of enabling teaching and learning during the pandemic. This research hence shows the rupture of working practices, educator identities and professional relationships at the focal point of education under lockdown, but placed in the wider context of increasing pressures on educators and top-down management in a neoliberal context (Moore & Clarke, 2016;Morrish & Sauntson, 2020;Thomson et al, 2021), as discussed below.…”

“#LongCOVID affects children too”: A Twitter analysis of healthcare workers’ sentiment and discourse about Long COVID in children and young people in the UK

“…35 In this regard, Fotheringham et al 36 indicated that during 2020 school leaders in the UK faced pressures and challenges related to translating and enacting school policies, particularly with the perceived lack of agency shared by the government concerning being able to translate centrally issued guidelines. In turn, Tomson et al 37 reported that the pandemic has negatively impacted the well- being of leaders in all types of schools and across all demographic groups, affecting their ability to think clearly and solve work-related problems. Given that the protection and care of CYP health during the COVID-19 pandemic ultimately rests with school leaders, the search for support strategies that focus on these groups’ needs becomes an urgent necessity.…”

Developing adaptability and agility in leadership amidst the COVID-19 crisis: experiences of early-career school principals

“…These novel challenges faced by school principals were out of their normal lived professional experiences (Thomson et al ., 2021) and has transformed the role of school leadership across Victoria (Arnold et al ., 2021). Within Victoria, school leadership was influenced by instructions from governments, unions and medical experts.…”

“…Principals felt that mounting contextual pressures from these stakeholders left them bombarded on many fronts as they led their schools (Arnold et al ., 2021). Increased importance was accrued to the provision of school education as it was considered a social stabilising factor in a period of uncertainty and instability (Thomson et al ., 2021). Crises are usually urgent situations within which principals have to take fast and decisive action (Smith and Riley, 2010, 2012).…”