How to earn top marks with the perfect Covid-secure gift for teacher

Victoria Lambert offers up some alternatives to the dreaded homemade soap and bath bombs Sign your name clearly. There’s no point in other parents getting the credit for your brilliant idea

No Christmas gift is as loaded with silent messages as that brightly wrapped parcel handed from parent to teacher at the end of the autumn term. It may mean: “Well done on a successful term’s education”. Or, “Thank you for putting up with my monster – I can’t deal with him either”. Or, “I’m so glad you, too, can sense that my child is a prodigy”. Or, “Look everyone, how generous I am and how well I get on with the school”.

Meanwhile, many parents are actually thinking: “HOW much must I spend this time?”

And elsewhere, some teachers are praying for non-personalised gifts that can be, well, re-gifted… as they lug home carrier bags full of homemade sweets, cookies, Best Teacher in the World mugs, needle cases with their initials sewn on and carefully pressed flower bookmarks. But this year, it’s all different thanks to Covid. While the sentiment towards teachers has never been more positive – thanks to the realisation during the first lockdown of how difficult it is to spend all the hours of the day with a truculent teenager or 20 – the opportunities to demonstrate that are much smaller. Which could be a good thing all round.

In the Welsh county of Rhondda, children have been asked by the council not to exchange presents and gifts at school. In addition, the council said it was also warning against gifts being sent into school by parents due to the risk of transmission.

“We recommend,” a spokesperson said, “individual schools consider suggesting alternatives such as donations to a school’s chosen charity.”

Public Health Wales say there is no official policy, but in Monmouthshire children will be allowed to send cards although “it is suggested that cards are collected and stored for at least 72 hours prior to distribution.”

Meanwhile in Ireland, gifts which are brought into schools will be locked up in quarantine, and handed out after the holidays – in keeping with health department guidelines there.

So what shall the rest of us do? One teacher told me that she’d settle for Peace on Earth or at the very least in her Year 10 maths class.

But less fantastical gifts would work well, too. An IOU for when This is All Over, perhaps.

A Costa card loaded with enough money for a week’s worth of lattes. Or a novel sent direct to the teacher from your online bookstore of choice.

If you are gathering funds in a class group, why not use them to send a gift card from John Lewis or Marks & Spencer (charity begins in homewear).

Or you might want to direct them towards the thermal underwear section, if school doors and windows are still going to be kept propped open in January and February. M&S Heatgen Thermal leggings (£12) are a must for next term. Or go to the escapist extreme

Avoid giving your teacher a personalised mask – they want to forget all about Covid with some holiday vouchers: a twonight hotel break costs £99 from Red Letter Days.

In a class of 30 children, that’s a £3 or so contribution per parent.

What not to buy is the same as it ever was: no more hand cream, pleaded one teacher. No candles, scented or plain, no bath bombs or handmade soap with

petals in it. (The cupboards are still full of last year’s haul; especially as there have been no school fetes during the past year requiring donations.)

Also not welcome would be masks with the Teacher’s Name embroidered on, antiviral gels, or anything pandemic-related. The nation’s educators intend to forget the horrors of this term for as long as they can. To help with that, send a case of Aldi wine to the school secretary and ask her to let the teachers pick out a bottle each.

Food, of course, has always been appreciated but now you can’t supply some homemade fairy cakes, baked by their star pupil, so organise a basket of muffins/pastries/cakes instead to be delivered to the staff room from a local bakery – which will also appreciate the business.

And if it’s one special teacher – the head perhaps, or that cheery supply teacher who has somehow kept all the classes going as regular staff have been required to isolate, falling like a row of dominoes – organise a night in for them, with dinner pre-cooked, by setting up a meal delivery from a local restaurant or pub.

There’s no reason, actually, why Teacher’s Presents shouldn’t always be this good.

A precedence of presents. Just make sure you follow the one golden rule and sign your name clearly. There’s no point in letting other parents get the credit for your brilliant, Covid-secure gift idea. Where would the advantage be in that next term?