FUTURE generations will be able to learn about life during the Covid-19 pandemic thanks to students at a Swindon school.

Artefacts from the last 16 months were buried in a time capsule at Nova Hreod Academy.

Among the items were pencil cases, homework, art work, facemasks, pupils’ lanyards, a bottle of hand sanitiser and signage from a one-way system, with an instruction that the capsule be opened in 50 years' time.

Swindon mayor Garry Perkins joined staff and pupils for the ceremony before the summer term ended last week.

Head of Year 11 Simon Foster came up with the idea for the time capsule.

He said: “Over the course of the last few months, I realised now that this time has a lot of parallels to the 1918 Spanish Flu.

“The pupils’ stories will be really important to tell because they will be living in a moment that nobody else from our generation has.

“It felt like there needed to be a record, and from that point, I came up with an idea to take some of their artefacts and stories to stick them in a time capsule, and then in 50 years' time people will be able to reflect.

“We also put in a memory stick into the time capsule which contained digital artworks, a video recital of the poem ‘Invictus’ and the original digital coded message.

“I don’t know what people in 50 years time will make of the memory stick, but hopefully they will figure it out.

“Some of the students will still be in the area when it comes back up and it potentially will create a nice connection between those generations.”

The academy already had one time capsule marked at Akers Way, which coincided with the new campus being built.

Mr Foster added: “The way we announced we were going to do a time capsule was through our big screen in the gym area.

“We just put up a coded message one week and the ones who were able to decode the message were then the ones who put the time capsule into the ground.

“It was a ciphered code with letters switched out with other symbols, we then dropped in various clues in assemblies, Twitter and the school newsletter which helped to crack the code.

“We also put in artefacts that the students actually used to add an authentic part of what students experienced.

“I don’t think time capsules are something that you should necessarily do regularly but the more you realise that the pandemic is once in a lifetime, the more you realise that’s something to be commemorated.”

“My feelings on it is that there will be a lot of academic writing on Covid, but it gives an idea of people living in the area 50 years from now what life was like at Nova Hreod Academy today.”

Mr Foster revealed that whilst pandemic rules such as school bubbles would be scrapped, certain things introduced by the fallout of the pandemic such as coloured lanyards and zoned lunchtimes will remain.