Schools obviously operate in their own unique time zones. How else can you explain why the exam season comes around so quickly, why pupils grow facial hair seemingly overnight and why it suddenly takes longer for experienced teachers to climb the stairs?

Tempus fugit

The start of a new calendar year is always a time of reflection, when we look at the past and what it brought us and then to the future and how we will make it better. It’s also one of those times that reminds us all how quickly time flies by, a milestone that makes you take stock.

Schools are places that, I think, remind us of the swift passage of time – and our own mortality – more than most. The nature of the school calendar means that almost every week contains an anniversary of some sort that makes me think, “It can’t be a year since we did that surely?

Why is my hair completely grey and why can’t I get up the stairs as quickly as I used to?”

Parents’ evenings, school productions, World Book Day, options, timetables and, of course, examinations. Soon, the GCSEs will begin; how can that be? At the time of writing, it has only just been Christmas and yet, in the blink of an eye, it will be exam season with sweltering weather.

That will last just for the actual exam weeks, of course, when we cram 200 teenagers into a large room for hours on end. As soon as this is over, the heatwave will vanish.

Then it’s a few more weeks and the end of the school year appears.

Shiny bright Year 7s

The other reason I think schools make us all too aware of the rapidity with which the calendar changes is that we are surrounded by our students who, in the blink of an eye, turn from shiny bright Year 7s (in my case), into large and hairy Year 11s.

They do it without you noticing and with unseemly haste. I spend the first term of each year asking our Year 12 students why they aren’t in uniform; in my mind, they are still surely only in Year 8? Year 9 at a push. Teaching is such a busy and ‘full-on’ occupation that individual days fly by, although Friday seems to come around much more slowly than Monday, for some reason. It’s probably something to do with relativity or gravity or something.

The fixed points in our calendar that conspire to make weeks and months also seem to take far less time than they should. We cut our already well-dissected year into not only days, weeks and months but also half-terms and terms, each of them helping to make very clear that time is rushing by.

These unique characteristics of the school year make it all the more important to take a breath, to stop and enjoy the moment.

Yes, there will be another Year 10 awards assembly, another GCSE results day and another Christmas disco and they will be here a lot sooner than we might like, but there will never be this Year 10 awards assembly again.

This assembly, with these children receiving these awards, with those smiles and those stories behind each and every one of them, is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Savour it.

The author is a headteacher in the North West.

Want the last word?

Last Word always welcomes contributions from members. If you’d like to share your humorous observations of school life, email Permjit Mann at leader@ascl.org.uk ASCL offers a modest honorarium.

Designed with IMPACT

© 2024 Association of School and College Leaders | Valid XHTML | Contact us