Recently I was on a Zoom call with a colleague who is the principal of a large college in an industrial city in the US. His college, which comprises many hundreds of students across the secondary age range, is an online college. Interestingly, this arrangement is not a response to Covid-19. The college was designed to be a permanent online secondary school. As our conversation progressed, my initial impression that this college was a rare special experiment, out there on the ragged edge of educational research, was shattered when my friend mentioned that his online college is one of 19 similar colleges in his district of the local education system. The reason for online schools mushrooming in this part of the United States is that parents and pupils would rather not risk the social interaction that their children face as they attend school in person each day. Clearly the levels of disruptive and antisocial behaviour in that particular region are a challenge for the local education authorities and principals. De-socialising schools, having learning take place out of the social context, clearly provides a safer practical solution. If my children faced such issues at school, I would probably seriously consider the same response. The fact remains though that life is a social experience. Therefore, by necessity, the learning that we put our children through as preparation for adult life needs to be immersed in a socially interactive environment. At Wycombe Abbey School Hong Kong, we have been very pleased with the very advanced technical level of online learning we have been able to offer our pupils and parents over the many months of school closure in the last disrupted year. School closures, nano flats reveal a government blind to people’s distress No level of technical brilliance though will ever replace the value of children interacting with each other as they problem-solve, play, experiment, creatively argue, construct, fail, succeed, laugh, commiserate, win, lose, achieve, hone, improve, support, listen, consider, reconsider, make decisions and experience the rest of the full range of daily social learning experience. Clearly, we live in an age where the technology to provide all of our teaching infrastructure is easily available to us. At our school, as with all other self-reflective schools, we recognise that no matter how efficient or refined our teaching technology becomes, it will never be able to replace the value of children learning in the society of their peers. We look forward to welcoming all of our pupils back to their classrooms very soon. Howard Tuckett, headmaster, Wycombe Abbey School Hong Kong