COVID changed the way adults work. Why hasn’t schooling kept up?

Mark Phillips is our principal a Crimson Global Academy, a global online school, with more than 20 years’ experience in educational leadership, curriculum development and student wellbeing.

When I talk to parents these days, they often tell me the same thing: COVID changed their working lives in ways they didn’t expect. Many now work in hybrid roles. They’ve gained back time they used to lose to commuting. They feel more in control of their days. And for the first time in a long time, work fits around family life, not the other way around.

Those changes weren’t small. They reshaped how adults think about productivity, wellbeing and balance. In fact, surveys now show that flexible or remote work is one of the most valued benefits New Zealand employees can have.

But while our workplaces have modernised, our schooling system hasn’t kept pace. Every weekday, we send young people into environments that look and operate almost exactly as they did before the pandemic; crowded classrooms, rigid timetables, limited individual support, and structures built around routines from the 20th century.

As a principal, this disconnect has never felt more obvious.

During the pandemic, families discovered that some young people thrived with more autonomy. Some worked faster and more efficiently when they had fewer interruptions. Others found the quieter environment less overwhelming. And many parents, suddenly working from home themselves, saw firsthand how the structure of the school day is built on assumptions that no longer match the reality of modern family life.

The school day - 9am to 3pm, five days a week - was designed for a very different era. It was built around fixed working hours, single-income households, predictable routines and limited mobility. It wasn’t designed for a world where both parents often work, where commuting patterns have changed, where adolescents have different sleep cycles from adults, or where wellbeing is increasingly recognised as central to learning.

And yet, unlike the workplace, schooling has returned almost entirely to its pre-COVID form.

I see the impact of this on students every day. For some, the traditional timetable works well. But for many others, it doesn’t. Some learners struggle in large classrooms where attention is constantly disrupted. Some find the pace too slow; others find it too fast. Young people with high-performance commitments, neurodivergent learners, and those managing anxiety or sensory overload often find the structure itself to be the problem, not the learning.

Parents tell me that their child is perfectly capable but exhausted by the environment. And rather than questioning the structure, we often assume it’s the young person who needs to “adjust”. The truth is usually more complicated.

Teachers feel it too. Before COVID, burnout was already a concern. Now it’s impossible to ignore. Surveys from the Education Review Office and unions show significant numbers of teachers reporting exhaustion, stress and a lack of time to do their jobs well. Much of that pressure comes not from curriculum demands, but from the sheer intensity of a school day filled with transitions, interruptions, administrative tasks and behavioural management.

Meanwhile, the workforce outside education has been given more freedom to shape its day, more autonomy over its environment, and more opportunity for focus. Teachers have not been afforded the same structural relief.

That difference matters. It affects retention, recruitment and the long-term sustainability of the profession.

I’m not suggesting every school should move online, or that the traditional model has no value. Schools are vital community anchors. But COVID showed us something important: young people can learn in more ways than we previously allowed for, and adults can work in more ways too. Flexibility doesn’t reduce productivity; it often improves it.

If we do want schooling to evolve, there are practical ideas already being explored overseas that don’t require dismantling the whole system. One is rethinking the use of a single day in the week. Some schools internationally now use one day differently - for project work, catch-ups, mentoring, or giving teachers protected planning time. It’s a small structural shift, but one that reduces pressure without lowering academic expectations.

Another possibility is reducing the number of transitions in a day. Many students and teachers find they get more done in fewer, longer learning blocks than across several short periods broken up by movement and noise. A calmer, less fragmented day makes it easier to focus and teaches young people how to stay with a task for longer.

A third idea worth discussing is school start times. International research shows that adolescents benefit from slightly later starts, with improvements in alertness, attendance and overall wellbeing. It’s not a radical change, just one that reflects what we’ve learned about the adolescent brain.

None of these changes are about replacing school as we know it. They’re about recognising that the world around schools has shifted and asking whether school structures should shift too.

Parents have more flexibility than ever before. Many workplaces have redesigned themselves entirely. But our schools, which serve the same families, the same communities and the same workforce, have not had the same opportunity to adapt.

COVID forced rapid change in almost every aspect of society. Workplaces discovered that flexibility can be a catalyst for better performance, wellbeing and balance. If those lessons apply to adults, there’s no reason to believe they don’t also apply to the young people we teach.

The question now is whether we’re willing to have that conversation and whether we’re prepared to let our schooling system evolve in the same way our working lives already have.