The Covid-19 crisis has brought out the best in teachers, parents and children

Extraordinary times produce extraordinary responses. After the Prime Minister announced on 18 March that all schools would close at the end of that week, teachers raced to build online learning platforms and create packs of printed materials, stationery and art supplies for some of the children to take home. Staff delivered the teaching packs to parents already in isolation, phoned parents to see how they could support them, and donated money for food parcels for families in need.

We had to console school leavers who had come to realise that their examinations had been cancelled and whose futures were now uncertain. There were special assemblies and services to say goodbye to pupils in their final year. Despite the fear and uncertainty, teachers have shown that they are ready to serve, and to do it generously and boldly.
On the following Monday, staff and pupils were back in the classroom. The headlines suggested that schools were closed. In reality their doors, and their hearts, were wide, wide open. In my own school in the Midlands, a Church of England middle school, a dozen pupils arrived and lined up behind the cones which we had placed across the playground, spaced several metres apart.