Knowledge Day, 1 September 2024
A first-of-September greeting for a yard that is fuller than last year, and for the yards that still cannot fill.
A good first day of school to every pupil, and to the teachers waiting in the yard.
More schools are opening in person this year than last, because more of them now have shelters. That sentence is undramatic and it represents an enormous amount of concrete, funding and administrative work by people nobody will thank.
In other places the yard will stay empty and the day will happen on a screen, in a fourth consecutive year. Those children are not having a different kind of first of September; they are having a worse one, and saying so plainly is more useful than encouragement.
To the first-year pupils wherever you are, and to the teachers starting a fifth extraordinary year: a good year to you.
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