I’d been ill since the first day back in January.

It started with a raging fever during the INSET day. Like all teachers, I took no notice, although my AHT mentioned that I looked ‘unusual’. Then came the cough – for six weeks. I went to the doctor – three times, which (as a typical bloke) was three times more than I’d been in the last 10 years. I told them that it felt like a rugby player was sat on my chest; like I couldn’t breath. I told them that I had no energy and a fogginess which made it hard to concentrate. They told me it was a virus and that it would go in time.

I was training for the Winter Green Man at the time, a 46 mile cross-country race which circumnavigates Bristol each year on the first weekend in March, so I’d spent months running 50 miles a week in the frigid rain. I put my exhaustion down to that and a stressful time at work.

My illness played out to a backdrop of personal unease. You see, for the previous three years I’d been running about (literally and metaphorically) doing a variety of jobs on top of my own: short-term Exec HT roles in vulnerable schools and a stint doing 2 days a week with the LA trying to improve behaviour in the county. And whilst interesting, it had been knackering.

My school had ridden a wave of excellent results and increasing popularity for seven years, but increasingly I was worried that we’d past our peak. Our Reading results had showed negative progress for two years. Three and it would be a trend which would be hard to explain to any visiting inspector.

By late February, still gripped by this mystery illness, I was on my knees. Noticing that I was a grey, coughing mess, my SLT sent me home – only the 4th day I’d gone home sick in 23 years.

On the drive home, exhausted and wracked with worry about the reading results, I wondered if this is was what burnout felt like.

A month later the school was closed by the pandemic.

It changed me.

Accidental positives caused by the lockdown.

For the next 90 days (every school day during the first lockdown) I was a Lunch Break Supervisor for the skeleton staff and children of key workers. I stood on the school playground every day and had ample time to reflect on my past 12 years of Headship, nine of which were at my current school.

That enforced moment of reflection gave me the headspace to work out what I was doing, and what I needed to do next.

This is what I learnt.

1. The emergency stop was necessary.

For 10 years the school which I’d led had grown in complexity.

Initiative and idea, upon initiative and idea.

We’d been successful, but the number of spinning plates had increased each year until it was difficult to keep track (and to keep up the standard) of everything we were doing. It was all good stuff – but there was a LOT of it. The mechanics of the place was complicated and, as new staff joined, fewer and fewer understood how to service the engine.

Then on the 20th March, the emergency stop button was pressed and in an instant all the complexity had to be halted.

Every ‘essential’ initiative disappeared and was replaced with a new reality of home learning and crisis management.

But the result of this was a moment to take stock. To consider what was actually important and what was ‘just stuff’ that we were doing because we always had. When September rolled round, we couldn’t re-start the engine as it had been before, but instead had to decide what was most important to us.

And in that act of re-starting, we had the opportunity to make conscious choices about what we thought the school really needed to be and do. We kept the essentials and ditched the ‘stuff’.

2. We’re in the people business.

School leadership is a relationship activity. It is about how we communicate with others.

Having spent those couple of years running about doing important ‘stuff’ and being busy, to my shame, I had neglected to remember that relationships are at the centre of the job. I had dashed from meeting to meeting, thing to thing and in so doing had not spent the time with my staff that I should have done.

But the pandemic gave me the opportunity to change this. During lockdown, each other was all there was, and , with only me and a rotating skeleton team, I got to re-know the staff.

I had worked with these people for years, but having the time to see them be creative in this new world, I could appreciate their potential and inventiveness anew. Communication was easy and decisions could be discussed and explained in a way that the old world ‘didn’t have time for’.

As with all schools, we got to know our parents, properly – many for the first time. We talked to them as equals and in so doing founded a respect which could only be borne out of adversity.

I know my staff and my community better than at any point as a school leader. And the benefits have been numerous.

3. Now is the time to re-articulate the vision.

Some of the most interesting research which is starting to appear points to the clarity of vision being a key determiner as to how well schools are weathering this storm. Put simply, schools which know why they exist are finding ways to thrive in this pandemic.

I’d always prided myself on our school vision being at the centre of everything in our school. However, a training session at the start of September, showed that most of the governors (who weren’t in post when the vision was formed) didn’t actually understand it – mainly because it had been some time since it had been explicitly articulated.

When they asked me to articulate the vision on the school website as simply as possible, initially I was testy. Surely this was obvious? But when I looked for myself, I noticed it relied on me to be present to explain it to others. It lacked essential clarity.

To explain what the school was about, in clear simple English, whilst capturing the ‘uniqueness’ that others often pointed to when they visited was challenging. To write it in words that could be equally understood by a child, their parents, the governors and HMI, more challenging still. But the act of putting this into words, added a clarity which only this emergency stop had allowed.

Our vision at the end of the pandemic has a level of clarity which it lacked at the start, precisely at the moment when the school needed to know why it exists.

4. You can’t change the wheels on a moving bus.

Another benefit of the pandemic was the opportunity to do a complete over-haul of the school’s curriculum.

It had always been one of our strongest features – a reason cited by parents for choosing the school and praised by OFSTED. However, in recent years it felt like we were starting to become like an aging rock band which only ever plays its greatest hits. We’d lost some fidelity and some clarity in our curriculum and only a complete re-write would bring back the vitality.

The four months of closure gave us the time to really think deeply about our new curriculum approach and work with our curriculum design partners at Lighting Up Learning to prepare and train the staff in a way which could not have happened if the school been running as usual. Importantly, it also gave us the opportunity to explore the pedagogical underpinning of why our ‘Enquiry led’ approach was the right fit for our vision.

The Education Endowment Foundation’s report into implementing school improvement notes that half of the time for implementing a new initiative should be devoted to exploring options and preparing the staff for the change before you get near being ready to begin the initiative. For the first time in a long time, I think we were able to give this time to our curriculum, resulting in clarity of understanding.

And we are not alone. In OFSTED’s first COVID report on schools in England they noted that many schools had used this time to develop their curricula.

The question now remains: how do we retain this slower, more thoughtful approach to school improvement once OFSTED, league tables, SATs etc return?

5. We need to simplify.

All the complexity which had built up over the last few years by bolting ever more new stuff onto our curriculum and school organisation had clouded our core purpose. The emergency stop allowed us to simplify. To strip everything back to its core.

Having had the time to explore a curriculum approach which delivered our vision of ‘Building Champion Learners through: Opportunity, Expert Tuition, Purposeful Practice and Individual Effort’, and having had the opportunity to clarify this vision and strengthen the school’s sense of self, we had the chance to simplify our approach around this core purpose.

With Subject Leaders coached by Lighting Up Learning, we were able to declare our curriculum intent clearly and simply. Every part of the curriculum, every subject, referenced back to the central vision.

We re-wrote the Curriculum Policy. For the first time in a long time we could articulate exactly how we ‘build champions’. It all fitted together neatly, with no bits bolted on, or flapping out the sides.

This is not to say that our curriculum was disorganised before – it wasn’t. But having the time and space to figure out what was important, and why, gave us that moment of clarity.

6. Standing on the playground is an important act.

Through the sunshine of Spring and summer during the original lockdown I stood on the playground and chatted to parents, staff and children. When the school re-opened in September (to ensure social distancing) this has become a 8:30am and 3:15pm twice daily ritual for myself and my senior team.

We talk to the children as they arrive in school, we chat to parents. We gauge the mood of the community.

I know the new Reception children (and their parents) better than any in the last five years. The staggered start and end times mean that each year group has more time, more space. And that has led to calmer and happier children and parents.

I used to think standing about on the playground was dead time, getting in the way of the ‘proper work’. But this daily ritual has become a moment to engage with the very community which I’m supposed to be serving. A moment to notice those around me: staff, children and parents.

I will likely never know whether what I (and in the end a lot of my staff) caught in January and February was COVID or some other random pathogen. I know that we’ve (so far) had only three confirmed COVID cases, but that could just be dumb luck.

I also know that COVID has been a disaster for children and families, with jobs, and sadly lives, sometimes lost. I would have much rather it had never happened.

But it did happen and, like most people, it has left me and the school forever changed.

The enforced period of reflection; the days and weeks and months stood on the playground covering lunch duties were strangely renewing. It gave me and the school a moment to stop and think.

And despite all the hardship and adversity (and there’s undoubtedly been bucket loads of that), I believe that our school, along with a great many others up and down the land, will emerge stronger and clearer.

As will I.

And as will you.