This article is written by Sarah Chapman Trim, UK public servant.

The Covid-19 lockdown has brought into sharp focus the interplay between caring responsibilities and productivity at work, a lived experience often masked by the vague, one-size-fits-all concept of “'work-life balance”.

I recently read an interesting, if brief, article addressing homeschooling and its impact on educational and social outcomes. The article, written by Ki Sung, senior editor of the blog MindShift, focuses on the distance learning priorities governments should consider before reopening schools.

Ki Sung writes: "School leaders are now weighing how and if to reopen schools in the fall or sooner; and if they reopen, how to prepare for closing schools again when Covid-19 outbreaks recur."

In the UK we appear to be approaching our transition out of lockdown in a linear fashion, assuming that once schools and workplaces re-open we will not find ourselves once again having to return to lockdown. It is important to shape expectations and refine our ways of homeschooling and productivity under lockdown to ensure we are developing best practise guidelines in education and workplace policy, and that these form part of our pandemic preparedness on a national scale.

Organisations which exclude women who are not able to keep pace with a normal, full-time load are likely to experience reduced profitability and competition in the longer term as they reduce their cognitive diversity and talent pool

I am often reminded of the School of the Air in Australia when I encounter those who are adopting a 'glass-half-empty' approach to homeschooling. The School of the Air is an education system that has worked well for 70 years, educating children in remote and isolated locations throughout Australia. Some research has shown that their remote syllabus is on par with, or better than, more traditional methods of schooling.

I attended school in the Australian outback for three years during my pre-prep days and have often reflected on how much I benefited from a deeper understanding of the human condition as a result of this time. We lived on the edge of a small, remote town and could see red desert stretching for miles from our front door. A life-long love of reading was born in a harsh and isolated environment.

The differential impact of homeschooling on workplace inclusion

With research from the University of Cambridge suggesting women are more likely to take the lead in homeschooling their children, working from home under the Covid-19 lockdown has become a diversity and inclusion issue. Organisations which exclude women who are not able to keep pace with a normal, full-time load are likely to experience reduced profitability and competition in the longer term as they reduce their cognitive diversity and talent pool. An enduring and intermittent lockdown will require flexible workplace policies to ensure both men and women can fulfil their desire to be involved in caring responsibilities.

Interestingly, the research also notes that "parental childcare roles are likely to be reversed in households where the mother works in a critical sector and the father is forced to stay at home due to social distancing measures [which] may accelerate the evolution of gender norms towards more equitable roles."

The 2018 Business in the Community and Santander Report Equal Lives is instructive and useful to consider in this regard. This research was the first comprehensive report of its kind to highlight the pressure many men feel from traditional gender stereotypes around being a caregiver versus being a successful provider. The key findings were that:

  • Whilst both men and women considered the opportunity to work flexibly was important in balancing work demands and caring responsibilities, the rate of uptake amongst men was considerably lower than its stated importance.

  • Men felt their advancement and progression would be compromised if they accessed family-friendly policies and they felt that their caring responsibilities were not as well-recognised as those of women.

  • Many men said they would be encouraged to use policies to balance work and caring responsibilities if they felt more confident it would not impact their career prospects and/or if there were more visible examples from male senior leaders in their organisation who were accessing family-friendly policies.

Striving to do our best

Research reported in the Harvard Business Review suggests that "People are grieving over the way things used to be." With this in mind, it is important to figure out how to be productive while scaling back expectations of teachers, students and employees who are homeschooling. A more useful handle is to stop focusing on the way things ought to be (therein lies madness) and start focusing on the way things are (which provides an initial roadmap of action). Psychologists refer to these approaches as emotion-focused and task-oriented coping respectively.

The best advice I have seen, written in a myriad of different ways, is to do the best you can, remembering there is a difference between being an educated professional and a professional educator

Many schools are grappling with how to compensate for lost learning and are considering extending the current school year into summer break or starting the next school year as early as July. No just no. Children need time to play, to read, to think about and explore their world and there are countless studies demonstrating the importance of this aspect of their development. Our role as parents is to enable their growth and development, intellectual and otherwise. We are, after all, raising the next generation of doctors and engineers, entrepreneurs and nurses.

My own experience of homeschooling my six-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter has been one of late nights and weekend work, relentlessly compensating for the disruption from an increased number of work calls from colleagues and the need to meet micro-deadlines for ongoing work. I am extremely fortunate to work for empowering line managers and conscious that my children are low maintenance insofar as being avid and independent readers, content to simply complete their assigned work and do not have special educational needs.

The best advice I have seen, written in a myriad of different ways, is to do the best you can, remembering there is a difference between being an educated professional and a professional educator. In this particular instance, we can draw inspiration from the Golden Generation, whose hard work and sacrifice we have recently celebrated on VE Day and Europe Day. Children and young people experienced considerable disruption to their lifestyle and education during WWII; organisations were forced to grow and adapt both during and after the war, with a shifting population of employees and capital.

This too will pass. Our collective desire to improve our lives, and the lives of others, should not. — Sarah Chapman Trim

(Picture credit: Unsplash)