This is The Guardian.

My name is Claire Longric and I'm the Deputy Editor of The Guardian Longread.

To end the year, we're bringing you a selection of our favourite pieces from 2022

with an introduction from the editors. We'll be resuming our normal program in a new year.

The Longread I've chosen today is Parents of Brighton for themselves and for their children,

an inspirational school in Impossible Times by Eida Edemarion.

I first started speaking to Eida. I think it must have been during lockdown when we realised

what an incredible challenge schools were facing during Covid. And although obviously older

children, you could send them work to be getting on with, but we were wondering what was happening

to the little ones and how much of their life and the drama of their everyday life and their

emotional development goes on at school and what effect it would be having. So we really wanted

Eida to be able to spend time in a primary school to discover how they were managing.

And of course these things take a really long time to get the access, but she lives in Oxford and

had discovered the school in North Oxford that was very remarkable and had a particularly

inspirational head teacher who was open to the idea of having Eida wandering around the school

chatting to the children, observing the lessons, basically poking her head in whatever door she

could find that was open. And she's come up with a story that is, I think, incredibly moving

and quite shocking in some ways, but actually not depressing because as she was saying to me,

children are amazing, they're very resilient and they're always curious and it's a new day every day.

So it isn't a grim read although some of it is pretty bracing because as she discovered the health

of children arriving in primary school reflects the health of the society that they live in and

and kind of the nation as a whole. So the children that were going through the depravations of

...