Editorial – the return to school

At the time of writing this editorial, Easter 2021, children and young people in the United Kingdom have returned to school. Although the return was in fact staggered across the nations of the UK, most children and young people have now been back in school for a few weeks. At this point in time then, it is important to carefully consider and reflect on some of the key messages emerging from research about the experience of ‘lock down’ for many children and their families. For in the future it will be vital for all schools to pay attention to and carefully audit the effectiveness of their pastoral care policies, practices and strategies. As Ofsted (2020) point out consideration will need to be given to the mental health and wellbeing of all children, but especially those who return to school having experienced feelings of abandonment, exclusion and alienation. A failure to achieve significant educational milestones through, for example, the public examination system, may have significant longer-term impact (Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2021). In addition, as the deputy editor of this journal Noel Purdy and his colleagues note elsewhere (Walsh et al., 2020), the experiences of ‘lock down’ have been mediated by many children through their social background.

If the experience of ‘lock down’ has in fact turned out to be a fallow period for learning for many children and young people, then media and governmental attempts to represent parents as home-schooling ‘heroes’ will matter little in the educational careers of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged. For it is they that are the most likely to have had the greatest difficulty in securing appropriate technological support, space to learn, books and other learning resources. The challenge then will be to create and provide ongoing support packages and experiences that meet the needs of individual children and young people. Different forms of mentorship, small group learning and individualised learning packages will no doubt be needed. However, there has to be a commitment to providing levels of financial expenditure that permit longer-term forms of decision-making and planning by school leaders. Surely what we don’t need is the creation of a national quango to supply local mentors, standards packages of ‘reintegration’, etc. etc.

If we allow schools to control their own resources and approaches to such work, then new opportunities for learning will be created. From the perspective of this journal, we hope that what follows the development of any new ideas and practices will be a growth in school-led research. Surely rich sources of experiential and practice data can be produced out of small and media-scale research activities? There will be opportunities for schools in a local area, or say through a Multi Academy Trust, to combine expertise and resources to build rigorous forms of research-based evaluations of their work. To gain a clearer picture as to what is effective practice as well as to share their findings and thereby hopefully influence decision-making at institution, local and national levels. For our part, the editorial board of this journal would welcome articles for review and possible publication that contribute towards building our collective knowledge and understanding, and offer new practice insights. Please get in touch if you would like to explore the opportunities for publication that currently exist through Pastoral Care in Education or the NAPCE newsletter.