A fine line

 There’s a fine line between being resilient and being an f-ing idiot. (Please feel free to read the f in full)

On Tuesday (which was two million years ago) the highest ever UK temperature was recorded. The thermometer topped 40 degrees and the National Press still made it sound like a war. Before it happened stark warnings were given about severe risk to life. 

While it was happening London spontaneously combusted, railway lines buckled, the landing strip at Heathrow melted, Boris Johnson had a leaving party and made his final words in the Commons ‘Hasta La Vista, Baby.’(there is no doubt that he just is a f-ing idiot), some schools closed or sent children home at lunchtime (to walk in the hottest part of the day - but they had their afternoon mark - so not the school’s problem) and the Daily Mail followed their terrifying warning with grumpy articles about keeping calm, carrying on and a blitz spirit.

There was a lot of talk of resilience. 

The people who had taken the warnings to the extreme and decided that they weren’t going to leave the house again until Summer was over lacked resilience. 

Some news articles encouraged people to make the most of the sunshine. They suggested that as climate change was now a ‘thing’ (as though it hasn’t been since I was a child when they built the flood defences to protect the Wash in Norfolk) people should just learn to make the most of it.

This encouraged people to take time off work and head to the beach, with a cool bag of alcohol and children in rubber rings for barely supervised swimming.  There’s a fine line between resilience and being an f-ing idiot.

Being truly resilient requires adaptation. You can’t just slog on as you did before if you don’t want to tip into the f-ing idiot role.

As usual, I was very impressed with our school. Mostly, there was adaptation. Blinds stayed shut, fans were brought in from home, children put their feet in water or had cool wet towels for their necks, teachers enjoyed spraying them with water, as though they had started their summer holiday and were casually misting their plants. Bizarrely, my music room remained at its usual 28-30 degrees. 

However, Ofsted chose that exact moment to send in Penfold. Poor little sweaty Penfold, who was unable to adapt much. Sitting in the sweaty headteacher’s office in a suit, typing up his report, watching lessons, grilling teachers and school leaders (grilling is always hot work)

I know that you are supposed to get angry about Ofsted in the last week of the year in a ‘national emergency’ heatwave but I just felt very sorry for the little perspiring person they sent in. His ability to adapt had been taken from him, sending him across the resilience line. I wouldn’t like to call him a f-ing idiot because the problem with being a public servant is that you don’t really have a choice. People who think that Ofsted inspectors, headteachers and individual school staff can just say ‘No’ are deluded. 

Because we are a very nice school with a lovely bunch of staff and all public servants, who can’t just say ‘No’ we were forced into a situation where adaptive resilience wasn’t possible. Adding the worst stress a school can face into the mix of a heatwave meant that most of us unwittingly became f-ing idiots. Who needs sleep? Who needs food? The fine line between drinking enough and not being able to get out of the classroom to pee is a tightrope that no one ever manages to get quite right.

Getting angry at the time would have been a misplacement of energy. There maybe time for anger on reflection. Not at poor perspiring Penfold, who was a nice man doing a difficult job in very difficult circumstances but at the people who decided he needed to do it then, without any adaptation.

It seems as though Ofsted sent lots of it’s inspectors into schools in the last week of school during the hottest days ever recorded and I hope an excellent investigative journalist is looking into why that happened. It’s hard not to be suspicious that there was some kind of sinister agenda. That’s what I hope. My positivity makes me want to believe that the head of Ofsted was being manipulated but some unseen political force and isn’t just a f-ing idiot.