Over the last ten weeks, I have taken a sabbatical from some of what I do and worked with a health emergency service.
Early on in the pandemic, this service decided to increase capacity in readiness for the extra demand it expected. But reality has been different to expectation. There’s been less, not more, demand than usual.
This decision to increase capacity may still prove wise. Demand for the service has been suppressed, not eradicated. At some point, that demand will reappear, even greater than before because it has been allowed to swell.
Many patients chose to suffer in silence as they made sacrifices to ‘Save our NHS’ or were simply too scared to go near a hospital. Parts of the health system have deferred demand.
When that demand finally hits the service, the added resource will be there, trained and assimilated and more able to withstand the pressure.
Making decisions when there’s a lot that’s uncertain is difficult. It demands that we keep a constant watch on what’s happening so that emerging trends and facts can be captured and brought into our thinking and planning. It is exhausting.
One of the big responsibilities given to school leaders is the lead role in planning – planning provision, planning spending, planning staffing.
Planning when there is uncertainty is hard. When there are many uncertainties, one can see that it would be easy to succumb to the feeling that you are a Captain cast adrift. In a storm.
In such circumstances, best guess deductions can help. Help to make good decisions. Help to minimise that sense of being adrift, and help towards taking back control when it seems most difficult to do.
Best guess deductions aren’t the same as just describing what you hope for and wishing for the best. A best guess is based on the facts that are available and one’s professional knowledge. They are robust deductions that can stand up to scrutiny.
Getting more than one to contribute to the educated guesswork helps ensure that important and available information isn’t missing from the deduction.
Teamwork at the planning stage will also help when it comes to delivery. After all, the plan is a plan of action and delivery is likely to require the engagement and commitment of others.
“Since determining what to do under uncertainty usually requires careful debate among many people across the entire company, you need processes and protocols to determine how issues are raised, how deliberation is conducted, and how decisions are made. You also need to clearly lay out the obligations of managers, once the debate and decision making is over, to put their full weight behind making the resulting actions successful.” McKinsey
Our best guesses will need to adjust as trends and facts emerge. When we make these adjustments, some might mistake it for confusion or caprice. Of course, there’s always a few that just like being snarky. But most are less likely to complain when things adjust if we share the basis for our best guess planning in the first place. Most people will respect a clear statement of ‘this is what I do and do not know’, even when they crave something more certain.
My Super 7 best guess certainties for planning at school right now are:
- Six months out of school is a long time. We will need to get to know and understand our pupils again, and they will need to get to know us and our expectations again.
- It is essential that we exhibit and explain the measures that we are taking to secure the health and safety of all at school. This will need repetition, often, and for some time.
- Remote learning has accelerated and there’s a wealth of material that’s more accessible than ever. Whatever may be happening, it seems wasteful not to try and make use of the best that’s available. There will be some who haven’t engaged with the remote learning that has been available already and we will need to do something to better that. This isn’t just the pupils; some teachers will have struggled too.
- Research suggests that English and Maths regress the most when pupils have extended periods of disruption to school.
- There’s a lot going on in Government, inspectorates and regulators. This may result in arrangements that are different to what would have been expected before the pandemic. It is even more important than usual to be actively monitoring them and it is a good idea to share out that task and to have a number in the room when making sense of it.
- Given that we cannot be fully sure that there will be no further significant disruption to school, it is necessary to reflect deeply on what has been learnt already about minimising disruption to learning.
- Good communication goes a long way to ease worry, gain trust and encourage engagement. It takes planning, platforms and preparation.
Pubs reopen in England on 4 July and in Wales quite soon after. Surgery and other health appointments are coming back on line. Transport is beginning to flow. And the pandemic is far from over. Emergency services are gearing up for business as usual, but more of it. I, and others who recently came on board, are ready to contribute. Ready, not quite as originally planned, but ready all the same.
“the best is the enemy of the good” Voltaire.
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