The trust deficit in England: emerging research evidence about school leaders and the pandemic

England has been living with COVID-19, through peaks and troughs since March 2020. Policymakers see schools as integral to economic and social maintenance and recovery and have thus placed a high priority on education as a stable provision operating throughout a very long period of considerable uncertainty and instability. Because of rapidly changing levels of infection and scientific understandings of transmission and prevention measures, the government has adjusted, often at the last minute, the legal requirements around the opening and closing of schools in line with the various levels of lockdown. School leaders have been faced with challenges unimaginable prior to the pandemic. Because schools are a major site for virus transmission, leaders have had to pay particular attention to the management of staff, pupils and buildings. Working together with the two leader associations, the authors designed and conducted a national survey to assess the impact of the pandemic on leaders' well-being and career plans. While the authors have not yet completed interviewing a sample of those intending to leave and those intending to stay, it is abundantly clear that the government has some way to go to win back the school leaders on whom they depend.