ABSTRACT
This chapter presents key information about the reorganisation of education during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time of unprecedented change and school systems and routines discontinuing. Over the course of a few weeks, key educational stakeholders, including teachers, school leaders, pupils and their parents worldwide, were forced to learn from scratch how to function and carry out school tasks with the exclusive use of digital technologies. None of the education systems around the world were fully prepared to face this unprecedented situation. The challenges they were confronting were complex – from organisational and technical changes required due to the abrupt transition from in-person to distance education, to administrative and bureaucratic regulations introduced by governments, often ad hoc, with little clarity and even less notice.
This chapter reconstructs the key organisational adjustments and technical solutions of how the UK and Poland went about the changes made during the pandemic. Indisputably, both countries adapted differently to the situation of the crisis caused by the global outbreak of the virus SARS-CoV-2 because of their unique characteristics. Polish and British modi operandi varied as they were determined by the response of the entire state system to this unprecedented situation (including lockdown decisions, which affected the operation of public institutions, as well as the public approach to the pandemic). As a result, Poland and the UK responded in a unique manner and introduced specific ways of dealing with the crisis, including the field of education. Showing these specific responses and systemic solutions is necessary to understand why, we argue, despite such a significant historical situation, extraordinarily little (if nothing) has changed in school culture.
