Under significant stress, students, parents, teachers and school-leaders have had to renegotiate their terms of engagement with the school system. The boundary between ‘school’ and ‘home’ that could previously be relied upon to define their roles and thereby provide clarity and reassurance was breached. 

Parents have had to step into roles previously ‘outsourced’ to professionals, teachers have had to find new ways of working together, and children have had to come to terms with the absence of familiar routines, rhythms and rituals. New forms of dependency, division and disadvantage have arisen, as have new assumptions about trust, competence and wellbeing. Existing structures have fragmented and been replaced by new (nominally temporary) ones, priorities have been challenged, and surfaces that were solid have become unstable or dissolved. 

Given all this, there is an understandable urge to return to normal, but it may be that this is not possible, and not just because we are stuck with the virus and its impact for some time to come. It may also be the case that the shifts in connection, authority, understanding, respect and purpose between all parts of the system mean there’s no going back. It may be that the questions raised about ‘normal’ by this unprecedented high-stakes crash-test mean many won’t want to go back anyway. 

There is an opportunity amidst all this to change the nature of the game; to rethink how schooling is done, who it involves in ‘delivery’, and what it seeks to achieve. In other words, to take an unexpected leap through Arundhati Roy’s portal. Which is why we are delighted to have been asked to contribute this research as Big Change and partners prepare to launch a new Co-mission on the Purpose and Future of Education. Such a leap requires a sense for how the key players in the game - the parents, teachers and children - relate on an emotional level to one another and to the system of which they are a part. 

The pandemic provides an unprecedented window for exploring that relatedness, how it has changed, and what people feel about that. And that is what we have set out to do here.