What have leaders across the world learnt from the Pandemic?

Having been involved at several conferences looking at the impact of the Pandemic, I was delighted to be given the opportunity to contribute to a conference organised by colleagues based in India from the Global talk Education Foundation. Entitled ‘POST PANDEMIC CHALLENGES AND DESIGN FOR SCHOOLS’ the event focused upon how school around the world were dealing with the impact of Covid-19.

It might well have been thought that an event bringing together speakers from India, Ukraine, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Abu Dhabi, Malaysia, Switzerland, Singapore, Canada, Maldives and the UK would serve to highlight the differences in experiences of Covid across the globe. To some extent this was true, with different countries finding themselves at different stages of Covid infection and vaccination experiencing a range of different impacts upon education. Hence as a speaker from England I spent some time discussing how we were about to re-open our schools, whilst in other parts of the world they had remained open throughout and a significant third group were still largely making use of remote education.

Despite all of this, I think that what stood out were the similarities rather than the differences between us. Firstly, we were all responding to a set of practical challenges that Covid had posed for schools. For example, all of us were considering how to re-design our schools so that they allowed for greater social distancing. One speaker from the United Arab Emirates discussed the need to re-structure existing classrooms to accommodate less children, and repurpose non-teaching spaces such as gyms and canteens. Age-appropriate graphics could also be added to the floors and walls to remind children to wash their hands and maintain social distancing rules.

Another challenge featuring prominently in presentations from across the world was how to make the best use of technology to support remote education. In some cases the technology involved was relatively simple, making use of platforms such as Google Classroom in order to draw together the learning for each student. Other speakers demonstrated some remarkably sophisticated uses of online learning, including a demonstration of how aspiring medical students could see the techniques used by surgeons in a virtual reality simulation.

Having heard all of this, I was rather embarrassed to find that my own use of fairly basic technology was found wanting. I had thought that I had sent a picture of myself looking rather serious and scholarly for the event publicity. However, I think I had instead sent a picture from my personal WhatsApp account of me attending a football match with my two sons. My family told me not to worry- they said they had never seen a picture of me looking so happy (not surprising, since it was a game that Liverpool won 4-0!)

Within all of these discussions there was a general recognition of the challenges produced by remote learning, summarised by one speaker as Higher need for parents collaboration, The challenge of developing an academic environment at home , Keeping students safe online , Students struggling with isolation , Handling the tone of passivity that develops in children. A parent at my school described teaching lessons over Zoom as being like ‘teaching through a letterbox’ and I think that this is a very effective image for the limitations of teaching over a video-conferencing platform.

As might be expected, my presentation focused upon the challenges for school leaders arising from the Pandemic. I think the point that drew the strongest response was when I shared Steve Munby’s advice that we should not be afraid to be imperfect leaders (echoing the title of his excellent book, which I would very strongly recommend). Steve’s focus upon the need to work as a team and his comment that ‘at times of crisis it is especially important not to pretend that you know it all’ seemed to strike a chord with everyone at the event. In a similar manner the slide below captured a sentiment expressed by every speaker, wherever they came from in the world:

Whether it is changing the design of schools, making greater use of technology or more fundamentally, showing a renewed focus upon equity and the closing of gaps between different groups of students, everyone agreed that we wanted the future to be different and that in this sense schools would never be the same again. We didn’t want to ‘go back to normal’ but rather to create a better normal.

All of which takes us to one final point. Despite all of our discussion of technology and our desire that the future needed to be different, there was also general agreement that responding to the Pandemic had taken us back to a set of fundamental values. One was the need to focus upon the elements that make up high quality teaching. Whatever platform or technology we employ, the need to be a skilled teacher constantly seeking to develop your practice remains unaltered. In this respect, the new Global Teaching Insights platform from the OECD is an invaluable resource, giving teachers from around the world the opportunity to share best practice and to upload examples of high effective teaching (www.globaleteachinginishgts.org) A similar point emerged about leadership. Despite all of the new and unexpected challenges that leaders across the world have faced over the past 18 months, when a group of worldwide leaders were asked to sum up the most important practices they had shown during the Pandemic, this was the picture that emerged:

In other words, despite everything that has happened and wherever we find ourselves in the world, the fundamental skills of leadership, such as collaboration, flexibility, a willingness to listen and remaining calm in a crisis, remain unaltered.

Categories

Archives

Recent Posts

Four Things I Learnt from ICP’s COP 28 Seminar

Welcome Mhlanga told us  that ‘school leaders have to lead’. If we want the response to the world’s changing climate to have a high profile in our schools and associations, then the example has to come from the top. It is not an issue to delegate to others. We...

read more

International Confederation of Principals

Become a member today