On 8 March primary and secondary schools across England re-opened for all to resume in-class education. Yet the preparation has been inadequate, with the government advancing a series of ‘recommendations’ on safety rather than a real plan for safety, wellbeing and addressing the crisis of learning created by a year’s mismanagement of the pandemic. The Tory government is intent on accelerating a ‘recovery’ which will inevitable be at the expense of the working class. Just as serious is the lack of opposition to its plans. Armed with nothing but timid recommendations of their own, the unions are failing dangerously.
Projections before 8 March say there will be up to 30,000 more deaths from Covid-19 by June 2022 whichever reopening scenario is adopted to end the third national lockdown. A group of scientists complained in The Lancet on 10 March that ‘not enough has been done to make schools safer for students and staff’, adding that ‘Without additional mitigations, increases in transmission are likely, this time with more infectious and possibly more virulent variants, resulting in further lockdowns, school closures, and absenteeism’. This directly contradicted Education secretary Gavin Williamson’s 7 March claim that ‘we are taking a cautious approach because we intend for it to be an irreversible approach and that schools will continue to remain open.’
According to the government, the testing programme proposed for schools would mean ‘very significantly reduced’ requirement for entire classes to be sent home into isolation. But testing confirmed that transmission rates remained so high that Weymouth secondary sent 230 students home on 12 March, a Sheffield primary 100 children on 16 March, and a high school in Kirklees over 130 children on the same day. The government also ignores the rising numbers of Long Covid cases among young people. An ONS Infection Survey showed that 13% of children aged 2-10 and 15% of those aged 12-16 had at least one symptom five weeks after testing positive for Covid-19.
The government’s policy on testing in schools has been dangerously inconsistent and unworkable. High school children were earmarked to be tested two to three times per week, but guidelines on staff testing were scarce. Schools were immediately hit with class and year group closures after single or multiple pupils tested positive; some were told to self-isolate despite later receiving negative PCR test results. Although the government knows PCR tests are more accurate, time is being prioritised over safety, so that quicker but less accurate Lateral Flow Device (LFD) tests have been sent out to schools. On 8 March, Minister for Children Vicky Ford said pupils would be sent home even if they had a PCR negative result after a positive LFD. Such confused policies on coronavirus tests are ‘nonsensical and unscientific’, says Professor John Deeks, of the Institute of Applied Health Research at the University of Birmingham, while the ASCL school leaders’ union complained that its members would struggle to explain to parents why their children had been told to stay home in such circumstances.
Playing catch up
Secondary schools in England are being told to consider in-person summer schools to aid the catch-up effort. Johnson’s promise that ‘no child is left behind’ was echoed by Education Recovery Commissioner Kevan Collins, who promised ‘no stone unturned’ in organising a catch-up programme. After the first lockdown from March to July 2020, the National Foundation for Educational Research found that children were on average three months behind, with the learning gap between rich and poor children growing by 46%. Disparities among children’s ability to access home learning mean that higher-income families spent 30% more time on remote lessons than poorer families because the latter have less access to computers and reliable internet. 82% of pupils in private secondary education received active support in the form of online classes, video or internet chat, compared to just 47% of the poorest fifth of children. The Sutton Trust reports that 47% of state schools are only able to supply half of their pupils with laptops. Working class children are being failed.
Addressing learning gaps has so far has involved paying most of the earmarked £350m to private companies to run the National Tutoring Programme (NTP), with schools forced to contribute 25% of tuition costs but having little oversight. On 19 March it was revealed that Sri Lankan under-18s were scandalously being paid as little as £1.57 an hour to deliver the NTP, prompting a Whitehall ‘review.’ Announcing new but vague additional catch-up plans, Williamson said that extra funding would be available – but this would amount to, on average, a miserable £6,000 for primary schools and £22,000 for secondary schools in recovery premium payments. Rather than pointing out that schools were being told to address learning gaps on a shoestring, unions welcomed the move as a step in the right direction. Williamson also used a 7 March Sky News interview to suggest that teaching staff would also have to accept ‘pay restraint.’ Additionally, the school day could be lengthened and holidays could be cut, with a potential 5-term school year on the way.
Unions roll over
While unions have used the pandemic period to offer courses, CPD, and ‘upskilling’ in everything from curricular planning to child bereavement, they offer no impression that the forcing of more work into the baskets of education workers is both unmanageable and unacceptable. While Williamson talks of pay restraint, the fashionable euphemism for pay cuts, there is nothing on pay in the NEU Education Recovery Plan – let alone anything to protect the wages of agency workers and others facing deepening job insecurity.
Like the advice of medical advisors, or official recommendations on face coverings in school, the unions’ ‘recommendations’ are just that, and certainly exclude any action. Five unions had expressed ‘concern’ at government recklessness over school openings, but they had no intention in backing up these words. By 18 March, NEU General Secretary Mary Bousted was talking in the past tense, saying the government ‘hasn’t taken the safety measures it should have done’ and ‘could have done much more.’ Labour leader Keir Starmer’s 22 February warning on LBC radio that his party would not support industrial action was met with tumbleweed by unions who have complied and collaborated too long to be tolerated by their members. Real movement is needed now to defend teachers and learners in the firing line.
Louis Brehony
