ABSTRACT
Schools are places of routine. Children need routines. Anyone working in a school becomes so familiar with routines that, after a while, they barely register. The degree of disruption caused to schools by the Covid-19 pandemic is hard to underestimate. For teachers, pupils and their parents, everything changed. Headteachers were presented with problems that were often almost impossible to solve. They had to deal with partially open schools, staff working from home, online learning, limited access to disadvantaged pupils, severe social problems, parental concern, political pressures, and fantastic uncertainty with regard to planning for the future. When schools were closed, middle leaders suddenly found themselves presented with an enormous number of problems to solve. Middle leaders certainly faced an uphill task in having to adapt so suddenly to new responsibilities and changes to their patterns of work but, in doing so, they may well have equipped themselves to cope more effectively with a new educational and pedagogical landscape.
