 Welcome to Pookie Ponders, the podcast where I explore big questions with brilliant people. I'm Pookie Nightsmith and I'm your host. Today's question is, how can boarding schools support children returning to school after lockdown? And I'm in conversation with Sue Bailey. So I'm Sue Bailey. I'm the head of Queen Margaret School near York. Queen Margaret is a boarding school for girls aged 11 to 18. I've been the head here just for a year, but in a previous life I've run a boarding house and I've been working boarding schools for about half of my career. And the other half of my career I've been working in pastoral care in big day schools. So background in boarding and in day schools. And always yeah with kind of children and young people's wellbeing and staff actually right at the heart of what you've been doing and that's how we've come to know each other over the years. So we wanted to think today about the specifics of children who are boarding and how boarding schools can support those children and I guess their families as well as we come to the kind of wider return after lockdown. And I kind of wondered what your initial thoughts on this are. You're having to think about this as a head and as a mum as well. I think my concern really, the heart of my concern is just the length of time that children have been away, young people have been away from their boarding homes and their boarding lives. I think for most young people boarding school is a second home and they feel very comfortable there and they don't see it as an alternative. They just see it as an adage. But they haven't been in the routines of home in boarding for six months by the time they come back just in September. Many of them will have left in a hurry as the schools closed down and quite a few of course will have gone abroad as well and will be coming back from homes overseas. So it's hard to be away from home and come back and just come back into routines and feel comfortable in your second home when you've been away for so long and particularly when you've been away and been with your parents and been in a very different environment for such a long time. And do you think that there are things that you can do like during this time in the kind of the lead up to it or will it all be about what happens when young people arrive back on site with you? I've been thinking quite a lot about this actually. I think there's quite a lot that we can do as schools before the start of term just to allay fears. I think one of the key things that we have got to remember as school leaders is that whilst we've been deep into regulations, into trying to predict the COVID world and trying to work out if we can make classrooms work at two metres, how dorms might be organised and things like that, whilst we're really into it, actually the children aren't, the young people aren't. They've not read the regulations nor have their parents, most of them and they won't have thought through any of the issues that might arise or indeed they'll have thought through and not know the answer and feel very uncertain about what they're coming back to or how is it going to work when there's usually five of us in a room, how's that going to work, now that kind of thing. So I think the key thing is not to assume they know and every decision that's been made in schools may well have been communicated to parents and staff, but even if there's been attempts to communicate that to young people over the course of the summer holidays, that will have just gone in one ear and out of the other. So I think there's a lot of preparation that we can do in terms of little videos, little walk-throughs when you arrive in school. This is how to look. We're going to ask your parents to park their cars here and House Mistress will take you to your boarding house however the schools are going to run that and then also reassuring them about the hygiene systems, the one-way systems, dining. Those things matter to all children when they're coming back to school in September but for boarding children, it's 24-7 so they really want to understand well how will it be if I want to get a hot chocolate? How will it be when I'm going down to breakfast and meeting my friends from a different boarding house or how will it be normally we're all, are we in bubbles? What's a bubble? How are we going to bubble? How can I hug my friends in a girls school? The girls constantly hugging each other. It's what they do. It's lovely to see you. They need some reassurance and some guidance and some preparation and I think actually videos work quite well in the YouTube clips because they can watch as many times as they want to and get that sense of what's going to happen. What is it going to look like? Are they allowed to hug each other? What does happen if they want to go and get a hot chocolate? What are the answers to some of these questions? The answers are pretty reassuring. Most schools are operating in bubble systems so they're going to operate in year group bubbles. The boarding schools that are used to a more vertical system of boarding where they have children from each year group within one boarding house, quite a few of those schools are moving to horizontal boarding so that the bubbles are intact and they would have told their parents about that already. But once they're in their bubble then their distancing is less controlled than it needs to be in a work environment and adult environment for example. So in our boarding houses, our year groups are bubbled, our boarding houses are bubbled. We will, where we can put some distance in dorms we will so some of the dorms may be a bit more spacious than the girls are used to but they will be in dorms still. They're not going to be in individual cells because I think government regulations have allowed us to make a judgement about what's right for young people and for me it's really clear that what's right has to balance emotional health and wellbeing against COVID risk. It's not one or the other and there's a balancing to be had and I have no interest in having young people in a situation where they feel entirely isolated in their second home as a result of being put in single rooms for example and things like that when they want to be with their friends. So there will be precautions in boarding houses in terms of shared communal areas. There'll be less opportunity just to go for a hot chocolate. There'll be much more of a routine around that as added precautions, added cleaning precautions and so on. But also a need to be a community is really important and we have that opportunity in the regulations to make that judgement and to risk assess that and that's what most schools are doing. Are you having to add in that kind of routine around sort of down time and leisure time and prep time, all those kinds of times are you having to do that all in different ways than you normally would? With horizontal boarding, not particularly so prep times the girls would normally be in any school, girls boys would be in prep rooms or in their bedroom studying and that would stay the same because they'll still be in their bubble. The main difference they'll feel will be that it will be dining I suspect that if they are not dining in their in-house bubbles and they're dining centrally as we do here at Queen Margaret then the bubbles will have to die in separately so there won't be that mixing of the year groups and that of course has issues when they're siblings at the same school so in different year groups and we're looking at how we can provide space for brothers and sisters in other schools that they've just got an opportunity to be together safely too but it will have to be in a separate area so that we don't mix our year groups and mix our bubbles. But generally speaking children wouldn't be mixing unless their siblings they wouldn't be mixing with children from other year groups. Other year groups, yeah. That seems a shame and I get that that needs to happen for the kind of physical safety and prevention of spread of the virus but I always understood that one of the great joys about boarding was those kind of friendships that you make across different year groups but maybe I've misunderstood that I don't know what your take on it is. No, I think that's right and I think the underpinning that is the greatest joy one of the joys of boarding is just the community is being one big family and all schools I think are having to look at how they underpin community in different ways and lots of schools looked at that over the lockdown how they perpetuated in an online world that sense of community and lots of examples across the country of virtual sports days and challenges set by prefects and opportunities for different year groups to get together online and try to mesh to keep the community together and mesh it together and certainly we worked hard on that ourselves there's still lots more creative thinking to go up to happen I think in terms of trying to find opportunities for the community to come together where there's a house structure that's vertical there's no reason why you can't operate distanced house meetings or distanced chapels something like that where you get an opportunity to come together in a different way but just not all at the same time so it depends on the space you've got yes I guess that's true and how readily you're able to utilise the technology I guess as well have there been any kind of positives that have come about in the few weeks prior to the summer holidays in terms of the shrinking of the world if you like via technology and so I think we've all embraced it a bit but have there been any benefits there that you think you might hang on to even after this is all over Absolutely I think being able to connect better especially with our overseas parents that's certainly improved as a result of lockdown and I don't think we will ever quite go back to parents meetings the way they were which is kind of the carousel of parents drifting around halls that we're all familiar with as parents ourselves I think the Zoom parents conference worked really well better than I think my colleagues thought it would and it meant that a lot more parents were able to speak to teachers and to have some really input into their child's learning so definitely that's a keeper and I think some of the approaches to learning in general and also just the I think we've finished the term all of us feeling much more comfortable with this online way of working and feeling able to have conversations and almost ad hoc through screens it's not the same as being in a room with somebody but as you get better at it it's improved So I think that's part of it And have you used Zoom and those other kind of online technologies to visit peoples and their families kind of in their homes which presumably we've been able to do before Yeah so we've used we were Google schools so we used Google Meet as our main way of operating and all the the girls had a weekly one to one meeting with their tutor every week so check in and then tutors getting in touch with parents and so on if needs be so that all happened as it would have done in the real in the real school and that was certainly really helpful in terms of supporting the peoples because it just meant that we had a real sense of how they were getting on and they were able to share perhaps in a way that they couldn't when they're online with their peers they were able to share actually I'm really struggling I can't upload or actually mum and dad are really busy at home there was some low level but important safeguarding concerns that arose from some of those conversations just so that we could speak to parents about and improve just the way that the children were getting on so that they were really making the most of their online learning and what have the peoples told you about their concerns or the things that they're looking forward to in September they are to a woman girl they are desperate to get back to see each other they really have really really missed their peers their friends and no amount of online chat either through school or through non-school means house party and so on none of that has replicated the feeling of being together wanting to be together and some of them have been really quite lonely as a result of being away from school because their borders their connections are with their boarding family who are scattered far and wide they don't have a local community in the same way around home some of them do and some of them are day girls and they live relatively close to school and they have been able to support each other but the majority of our girls have come from all over the world, all over the UK and they didn't have that foothold in their local community where their parents live in the same way so there was more of a sense a heightened sense of isolation I think for them, for boarding girls and there would have been for today so they've really really missed you they've missed each other they've got the facility of the school to basically we facilitate their social life and their interactions with each other and they've missed that and as hard as to try as we might at the end of the day you simply can't replicate online sitting around having a good old chatter when you're a teenager and you mentioned before about how it was tricky for some of them it was quite a sudden ending normally presumably when you've had children who've been at the school for a long time then you have to facilitate that ending quite carefully I would imagine but in this instance for some of them it will have been the very end quite quickly and so how did you kind of manage that and how have you managed the fallout from that? I'm a great believer as you know Puki I'm a great believer in good endings I think you need to end well and to have it robbed from you I think rightly was the greatest injustice for many of the girls our six girls in particular who were in their last year and we're looking forward to their final term of experiences not just A-levels but also the speech day and the Leavers Ball and all the things that go along with that coming of age really what we did in the days as the school came to its close from the government's regulations the girls began to head home but on the very last afternoon we had about a third to a quarter of the school left and we gathered in our quiet gardens in our grounds here and had an end-of-term service some prayers, some thoughts and just an opportunity to come together as a community and say goodbye for now at least and it was quite moving very moving actually and it was really important that girls who could attend did and that they could take that moment so I promised the other six and we'll stick to it that they would have their proper end-of-term ball and so on when the time is right when we're allowed to do that and they can really enjoy that moment and in fact I've sent them a questionnaire asking them when they would like it so that I have a sense of what's right for them and then for me now the priority is thinking about a good start and I think bringing the school back together in a slightly different way rather than the usual end-of-term start-of-term arrival and find your room and things like that just trying to think of how we can safely have a little bit of a sense of occasion of being back again and trying to bottle some of the joy that there will be in that first 24 hours as the girls come back to school and what thoughts do you have about that how do you think you might be able to enable that good start? So some of our ideas include hopefully usually the weather is very good when we come back to school it's always slightly annoying that the first couple of weeks of September are always good it's rained out throughout August a bit of a fair actually a bit of a country-fate feel to things so we can keep the distance keep the bubbles, keep some we need to keep some control over arrivals and so on but we can we've talked about having picnic campers prepared for families so they can have a bit of a picnic they're welcome to stay for as long as they need to in their area in their bubble whether we get a nice screen ban in we get a decent coffee ban in and just really try to make it a celebration in sort of garden-fate type feel just kind of where our thoughts are going and that's quite that's very much my kind of school that's how this school feels so it'll be different in different places but we've also got girls overseas girls coming back early because they have to quarantine I was going to ask about that because it's coming from all over the world so what does that look like practically? So practically that means we've got girls arriving here from the 20th of August and we're going to look after them so that they're quarantining in familiar surroundings with their friends as they fly back and we'll pick them up from the airport and bring them straight back to school feed them we've got a program of activities and some additional EAL teaching because some of their English might be a bit rusty after six months away and what does quarantine look like? I mean do they, so they can be together in quarantine? It's not self-isolation and none of them will have COVID they wouldn't be able to join us if that was the case so they don't need to self-isolate but they do need to quarantine so we'll have them in one of the boarding houses they'll be in separate rooms but they'll be able to eat together and undertake some of these activities bits of sport, bits of learning and so on together too and then we've got a COVID-prepared medical centre so that if there are anyone that's taken ill if there's any concerns about their health then we can put those routines into, straight into into practice if there's any concerns during quarantine and school will be closed So quarantine is basically just I don't know what's the difference between self-isolating and quarantine there's probably no inside out but the key thing is that if you are self-isolating then you, no one should go near you because you have COVID so you've got the symptoms of COVID you've had a test you've been told to self-isolate the children that are returning to us do not have COVID symptoms so they are just asked to stay at home it's the same as the UK citizens coming back from Spain at the moment providing dress the family members in that dress don't have to self-isolate but you do have to try to keep away from just thinking of the boarding house as a household they're joining their household and then we look after them from that point they'll be temperature checked every day our medical team will be back on site from the 20th as well so that we've got that oversight of their quarantine period and we've also got a camp running here at the moment but that finishes on the 19th of August so that we've got no one coming on to site other than our staff and girls from the 20th but it means your staff are having a longer school year and the girls we're using an outside company who would normally provide a language school anyway during the summer holidays and of course lost that business they're going to look after the girls during the day and provide them with some business as well and it's just our staff who look after them passionately gosh there's so much to think about isn't there presumably you're having to keep quite a close watching brief on what's happening worldwide with regards to Covid because it may be that there might be some countries from which we wouldn't I don't really know I mean are you having to think about those things too so what schools are it depends really on the individuals where they're coming from and really following Foreign and Commonwealth Office advice is the only game in town and also having a good relationship with Public Health England so that you can take some advice if you need it for us most of our girls are from Europe our overseas girls are from Europe and from the Far East so it's relatively straightforward but I think if you've got girls that are boys coming back from South America or from the African continent then it may well be trickier all the states right now and are you having to so you said you've kind of you've got your medical wing is kind of Covid ready as well so you've had to think quite carefully about that what does that mean so that means that we've got zones within the medical area so there's quite a lot of prospects around the school in general one of the things that I'll be showing the girls on my YouTube videos so that the medical staff can assess girls as they arrive at the medical centre straight away but safely in terms of what made me wrong and then basically our centre is divided into green, amber and red so green for girls who have no symptoms of Covid, they're not presenting with anything they're spraying their ankle amber for girls who have symptoms of Covid but are yet to be tested and then red for girls who have had a positive Covid test and therefore have to self-isolate safely and away from everybody else I was very keen when we were planning it not to have amber girls with red girls and just thinking through as a mum actually, it's very interesting if you think it through as a parent some of the decisions you make are different from the ones you might think through just as a head as a parent I didn't want my daughter who may just have turned up with a nasty cold to be putting a red zone with girls who are obviously who are known to have Covid when she may not have Covid at all she might just have a cold and that will be the case all the usual coughs and sniffles that happen in schools on the return to school in September every teacher in the country will recognise that they get that colds do the rounds in the first month of the autumn term as all the children come back and that will be the same again but somehow schools whether they're boarding schools or day schools are going to have to try to work out how they manage the child that turns up with a slight temperature and a cough that's got a cold and the child that turns up with a temperature and a cough that's got Covid and how do we know and how do we know and then from the point of view of boarding how do you look after and no one's answered this one how do you look after that child so if the child has it in a day environment if you as a school are concerned that the child may have Covid-19 and you'll ring the parents they'll be in a room isolated, you'll ring the parents ask the parents to come take the child and have them tested and keep them at home until the test comes back in a boarding school we are the parents but we don't have access to testing on site so we have to so one of my staff will have to drive the child to a testing station or we'll have to await a test and while we're waiting a test we don't know how long it'll take for the test to arrive and we've got to try and look after I'm very scared young person so who hasn't got mum saying don't worry we can do all that it's quite the same as your mum saying that and we've got the thought of and I think again for all schools this is the case the moment you suspect that a child has Covid-19 then your medical staff don full PPE now if you're 12 years old leave aside if you're much younger but in certain prep schools at the board they'll have younger children than that but if you're 10, 12 years old even if you're 14 actually and somebody says you might have Covid, hang on a minute and they come back fully with the proper medical PPE on I think that's really scary yeah it's scary and somehow we've got to as schools prepare the children for that without frightening them too much and making it feel that they're in some kind of alien environment they're still in hope but that's the reality the reality is that the person who is dealing with them is meant to, the medical professional dealing with them is meant to wear full PPE wow so and there are barriers the whole time this is barriers, barriers, barriers at the very moment when the thing you want to do as a caring individual human being is not have the barriers it'll be alright, you'll be fine but we just need to really hard to communicate that when you're advisor mask or surgical gown and there's no I think we've all kind of pushed that to the back of our minds over the last few months since the regulations came out in beginning of July because it's a horrible thought yeah you hope it doesn't happen but at the same time you have to be completely prepared for what if it does don't you well we do and I think I was reflecting on this with a colleague earlier today the beginning of the summer holidays I think that nationally we felt quite positive, we were coming out of lockdown the rates seem to be improving I was wondering whether I'd been too cautious in some of my decision making and yeah just we're talking now at the end of July the talks for second wave in Europe the sense that really things are not quite as controlled as we might like and therefore actually probably we do need to think about some of these things these things will be a reality for us in September and managing a student well being and also stopping particularly in a girls school but in all schools actually the drama someone gets someone has someone sneezes oh my gosh they got COVID oh my goodness we're going to and just trying to manage and educate and how are you planning on that I mean have you thought are you building this into some of your PSHE curriculum and that kind of thing so building it into our PSHE curriculum building it into our first into the first few days back some schools I know I've got a very different first start to their term not having a normal timetable they're really giving their children time to come together and get to know each other again really and just and feel comfortable in their environment and and we'll do the same but I think we'll feel like I want to fill my way a bit I think there's going to be such a diversity of experience amongst the girls yes and I think generalising could be the worst possible for everybody so just really and unfortunately it's a relatively small school that we can be quite individual in how we and how we support everybody and age wise too it'd be very different how you support an 11 year old is going to be very different from how you support a 17 year old yeah and I think everyone you know it's one of the things I keep coming back to everyone's going to have a different story to tell and some of those stories will be positive and some will be negative and many will be somewhere in the middle but I think particularly in a close knit community like yours but where people have been scattered all over the world and across the country there will be hugely different experiences and I would imagine there'll be a great appetite for hearing what each other has been up to and what that's actually looked like as well and I think you know and allowing people to share that and also not to judge that because I mean teenagers very worried about how you know what will they think if I say well basically I spent most of my lockdown in birdwatching and I had one of my girls has done exactly that and she's had a fantastic time and others who've had perhaps live in cities and have had a very different experience as a result of quite a close lockdown in their country and everything in between but all of those are valid experiences and actually sharing that is a good way to bring the community back together and giving opportunity for that sharing and legitimising that I think it's quite important and do you have any kind of expectations on what your girls should have been doing and how they should have used that time because one of the things that I've been hearing and I've heard it a lot from adult friends but increasingly from teenagers is this idea that so many people have you know learnt a new skill or written that novel finally or whatever during lockdown and as this very idealised view of what should have happened I mean I don't know about you I've basically just been trying desperately not to sink and I think that no and I think that that and actually I think that's the majority of people that's exactly what's happened it's been about just trying to keep going and I and so I have no expectations I think basically you know the joy will be that we're simply together and and some of us won't realise what positive experiences we've had until years down the line and you know and others will feel I wonder some of the girls and the families will feel a little bit bereft actually that this is over they've had a special time which they never thought they were going to get together and and coming back into boarding coming back into routines will will feel a little bit like the end of something the end of an era almost six months of being family yeah particularly for your borders I mean it will be the longest they've spent as a family for years for some of them some of them yeah and for some of them that's been a real joy for others that's been quite tricky yeah some of them don't want to be parents for six months and and and I and I'm concerned too to support my families not just my girls because I'm worries a strong word but I'm concerned that the actually the parents and the mums are going to struggle a bit with all of this yeah it isn't just about the girls it's actually about the family and the and mums who perhaps connected with their daughters in a way that they hadn't anticipated even mums who your boarding is absolutely what they do your boarding families through and through really believe in it love it so glad the girls are back but actually just that sense yeah yeah now my girls gone and do you think there will be more kind of separation anxiety I mean presumably you get some degree of that when when children come back to boarding each year anyway but do you think it might be more so this year I think so I anticipate that having said that I don't want to judge anybody I do anticipate more of that yeah and I know sharing with you earlier my daughter who will be 10 in September she's boarded just been a flexi border for a couple of for a year a couple of nights a week and and certainly that's been a separation and just the attachment and so on has definitely changed as a result of of this and you know in the end in a good way I think I'm not it but it but it has changed and and I think as parents and as educators being just cognizant of it and aware of it will help us to support the girls and their families and the children and their families when they come back to school and also to be aware of it not in the first 48 hours of joy and excitement but actually in that downward right oh right so I really can't you know sit in supper with with mini Molly and Mandy and you things oh right this really is different you know all right you know mum's stayed a couple of perhaps quite often parents will stay a couple of nights nearby and then head and then head off and when they know their parents have gone back home and so on I think that's the time when we'll be we'll need our reserves of emotional energy to support the girls and girls and boys I can imagine that will be quite tricky and what you said you were and I completely emphasised with the idea of needing to think about how to support the families as well as the girls the children what will you be doing I mean what does that look like I think we've tried throughout the lockdown to do that so plenty of communication with families I think frequent and not too wordy if you can manage it and some of my communications last time were video rather than letter and just trying to connect with them a little bit more I think trying to make the start of term the dropping off as humane as possible in a situation that will feel less than that normally parents would part of the right of passage almost is that you go up to the dorm and you help your child unpack and get things put away and you sit on the bed and none of that's possible and so what could be a very sterile and difficult start and that again was where the garden fate idea was coming from in ways to reach out to parents and realise that we're still the welcoming place we've always have been and find ways and opportunities and routines that enable parents to be part of their children's life even if they can't physically be in the same room you know you're going to have to budget for that fate every year I know if it's too good I'll have to do it every year it's not a bad thing if I had to buy some more bunting that's a small price to pay for getting it right maybe you could have the girls who are coming back early for quarantine make it in the evenings and it's just that sense of of joy it's not been an entirely joyless experience lockdown for most of us there's been times of great strain I support everybody but not not wholly and for those families where schools are aware that there has been a particular difficulty there's already a lot of support and work going in there to support those families already but to try and bring some joy back into being together I think as lockdown eased we found that as individuals and as families and friends having been able to have a socially distanced barbecue suddenly became a really lovely thing to do which had been routine before so I think it's valuing knowing what to value it's interesting hasn't it I think it's if nothing else it has been a moment of real reflection and working out what really matters and I think when everything's suddenly taken away you do appreciate certain things and you realise the things that really matter to you don't you and that's true for young people as well as much as it is for parents and adults and I think and certainly talking to some of my girls that really has been part of their thinking what is it that matters, things that really matter and some of the girls I've been at the sports camp actually some of my girls and they I just can't wait to get back to school I just want to see Mrs. So and So I just want to see some of the things some of the very routine interactions the things that they've most missed and obviously the pandemic isn't the only thing that's been relevant during this time so the other massive agenda for everyone but teens in particular seem to be really keen on it is the kind of the Black Lives Matter kind of movement and is that something that's kind of coming up for your girls and is it something you'll be looking to specifically address on their return that very specifically during last term so during the George Floyd process and so on we were very some assemblies my head of history did a great presentation and so on on the impact of Black Lives and British History and we made some changes ready for this term in terms of our approach to diversity and our look at how and what we teach so for us it's a continuum and certainly the girls appreciated the opportunity to think deeply about the issues that the protest raised that Black Lives Matter raises and will continue to raise and we had one of the senior prefects was always the senior prefect international and I'd already made a decision to change that to inclusion because I think it's also raised for our girls and I think probably most school communities not just issues around Black Lives Matter but also issues around the support and the approach that we give to families young people of all kinds of all genders of all types and indeed my own passion around supporting mental health of young people you just allowing proper conversation the same way Black Lives Matter encourages us to have proper and deep and difficult conversations the same is true and should be true to facilitate a number of conversations about all kinds of things and has that agenda been, was that sort of driven by staff and kind of seeing that this is a issue for everyone or was this driven by your students or was it kind of a combination of the two it's a combination of the two our students my girls were particularly aware of their privilege and I'm very proud of the fact that they recognize their privilege and what they want to learn is how best they use it in the right way and I think children in schools such as mine they are socially engaged and they are deeply ethical and they sometimes put us as teachers and adults to shame with that real passion and sense of right and wrong but what they want to do we say this our job is to educate young people to think for themselves and then we shouldn't be surprised when they have thoughts we don't like they are allowed to think that's the whole point not meant to come out of education having it being stereotypes of the teachers that talk to them they're meant to come out as free thinking and deeply thinking young people who want to effect change and make a difference in their own lives and other peoples so when they turn around to you and say we think the school should be doing more for this then you have to listen partly because that's your success if they're questioning and asking challenging you on your standpoint then we're doing a good job and the last thing we should be doing as educators is just you don't know what you're talking about you just don't understand that schools can never possibly do that tell me what it is you want this but why do you want it explain that to me and then we'll see what we can do and presumably as your girls return in the autumn then you'll be thinking really carefully about how to continue to engage with them to find out how things are impacting because we don't really know do we we're making best guesses right now and you're clearly planning really carefully but we don't know what's going to happen next or how this might impact on them or what might be happening at home for some of them and they might have fears about what's happening back at home if they're away and I think one of my concerns as an educator not just as a head teacher but as an educator is that we have completely understandably have concentrated on how we support the most vulnerable children and how we support most vulnerable families that's absolutely right but we what about the children and the families who just don't know if I but actually aren't and we've known pre-COVID we've known that that is how the real difficulty in supporting families and young people particularly in terms of mental health I don't think you are fine actually no there's something not right you just don't see yourself all your friends have said that they're a bit concerned about you and we've found ways over the last 10 years to open up those conversations and encourage young people and families to talk more openly about their mental health and for friends to come forward I saw that so much in the last 10 years of the increase of friends coming and saying we're really concerned about so and so and the same is true for the COVID experience so yes we need to support the most vulnerable children and families those that have been shielding, those that have had suffered bereavements we know about those and we know we've got to do something for them but what about the ones who just say no I'm fine and you come to see over the course of a week month that really isn't the case and and how do we support them and we already have pushed to support the others as well as teach and try to make up some of the the grounds that some of them will have lost through being away from school not home learning has worked really well for quite a few schools but not necessarily for all individuals yeah there's a lot of challenges there aren't there and like you I'm worried and both in the context of COVID more generally about the quiet ones in the middle they're the ones that really worry me now I think we've always been good at the vocal minority and those whose behaviour kind of challenges in whatever way we hear them and the vulnerable we now are pretty good picking up and thinking how do we support how do we enable those voices to be heard but it's the quiet ones in the middle that are just skirting by under the radar they worry me the most and yeah I think you're right in this context too so maybe they haven't been directly bereaved directly affected in ways that are obvious to us but that perhaps there's stuff going on there are you having any changes in terms of the kids who are boarding have you had people who are no longer going to board or newcomers like has that sort of changed as a result of this current picture or is it broadly as you would expect in any normal year broadly it's as we would expect we've we've introduced a simplified Covid timetable for September sort of learning the lessons of our similarly simplified timetable last term so we have a temporary timetable operating for the first term probably for the first term which means that they for us there will be no Saturday morning academic lessons and in boarding schools that's normal and so our academic lessons will finish on a Friday at the end of school on a Friday there will be schools open on Saturday there'll be some guided sport there'll be opportunities to go to the art room and carry on with your art and so on but there won't be any timetable lessons and the result is that some of the families our families have decided that for the short term in this different timetable they're going to weekly board so their girls will go home at weekends but that's really the only change that we've seen otherwise it's very much business as usual for our families actually they're carrying on supporting us and supporting their daughters in the in whichever system they were operating before so some girls were for boarders some girls were day boarders boarded one night a week that kind of thing and just finally in terms of new children who are new to boarding are you doing anything different for them than you would normally to help them sort of transition in at this time or is it your usual kind of transition process we've done what we can in our usual transition process they really missed out then we have a new girls day in June where they would normally have come into school and they would have spent some time in their in the boarding house we have a junior boarding house they would have met some of their teachers they would have met the girls the mums would have met each other which is also quite important part of the settling in process we had a virtual we had a new girls week where they dipped in and out of various things that were going on which helped some of them but I'm sure didn't help all of them as much as they would like many of the things that we're doing for all the girls the same we can do for the I don't think there's I think I've basically gone for I want to help everybody as much as I can so they say the video walkthroughs for all the girls there'll be a few extra ones for the new girls and some more introductions some more personal videos some of their key staff so they can have a sense of what people look like and what the name of the dog is and things like that and we'll just try to help them as much as we can and also just support them and support their families their families are worried about a course because they haven't had that same introduction but without physically being in school it's very very difficult to do more it sounds like you've got great measures in place though and I think that often it's the case isn't it that young people actually just they manage these things so tremendously well and I think sometimes it's the families that find it harder isn't it there's a danger that we overthink it and I think the very bottom line is that it's just quite simply be as positive and as open and as joyful as possible it's kind of the way I go about things so where we can use humour use humour there's no reason why the walk my little video walkthroughs can't be with the dog and here's another piece of perspective how many is that in this video just things that can just help just to kind of bring a bit of sense of personality and fun back because there's a lot of regulation and perspective screens do not make you feel joyful no it's people that make you feel joyful and if one thing there's one thing that boarding schools do really well is people that's what right in the middle you can change the staff but ultimately the community is still at it's heart is what the place is about is the Beasing Hartford Place and it's why I love working in them and it's remembering that and using that as the basis for everything else that comes what thought would you like to close with what thought would you like people who've been listening to to go away with I think I would finish just by saying the most important things to do to prepare if you're preparing your child to go back to boarding is to let them talk about their expectations let them talk about their fears don't just brush the cycle it'll be fine let them express how they're feeling about boarding including if they're just saying mum I can't wait to get away from you all of those things are quite important have really open conversations engage with the schools many of the schools will be doing we're doing sending videos pamphlets and leaflets and all kinds of things to try and help with the communication engage with those use them and don't be afraid as we get towards the beginning of September to pick up the phone and talk to your child school we don't mind the more conversations we have then the better it's going to be