Headteacher's Blog #8

I had to put out my blog slightly later this week as we are just recovering from a global Microsoft outage that has paused our emails and cloud based systems across the school. When I told staff this in briefing this morning there was no concern, in fact I would describe the mood as relieved. For a brief period of time we would all stop receiving emails and focus instead on the job in hand, educating children and talking to our colleagues. I reflected that I am old enough to remember a time when emails did not dominate the life of school staff, a time when typed memos would appear in pigeon holes (look it up youngsters) to be read by staff when they got round to it and acted on at some vague point in the future. For one golden day we were there again, basking in the information slow lane, decompressing.

I am certain that by the time you read this Mr Gates will have rebooted his servers and the AI complaints, Department for Education guidance and the endless spam will have cascaded like a tsunami into our inboxes. We will once again face the anxiety inducing, the urgent and the pointless with the utter certainty that it will not relent. When I was young we were taught what to do in the event of a nuclear war, the government would run terrifying adverts telling us how we could prepare. Now the government tells us to prepare for cyber war, a future where the internet of things malfunctions and the world as we know it ceases to operate. In the event of this happening I will sit by candle light, open my can of beans and enjoy the peace and quiet. Have a restful weekend!