Teachers have been subjected to constantly shifting education policy in the past year. They’ve had to rush to follow the latest pandemic plans only for these to change completely in a matter of days. The government’s treatment of schools has at times seemed nothing short of chaotic.
On 15th December, in the last week of the autumn term, the government announced it would send out rapid-result “lateral flow” Covid-19 testing kits to all secondary schools and colleges, which were told to begin mass testing as soon as pupils returned in January. The announcement came as a shock to school staff, says Jon Richards, head of education at UNISON, the UK’s largest trade union. “We were getting lots of people really worried and concerned, not knowing what they were expected to do.” Firstly, he tells me, it was unclear who was expected to carry out the testing. “We pointed out, actually a lot of teachers can’t do it because it’s not in their contract to do it, and the support staff would be busy doing other things. There just wasn’t time to organise the workforce. The staff were really unhappy.”
After the new Covid-19 variant spread rapidly in the UK over the Christmas break, education unions advised members that they did not have to go into school in January. “We were getting a lot of pressure from our members,” Richards says. “And we had a bit of a spat [with the government].” On Sunday 3rd January, Boris Johnson assured Andrew Marr he had “no doubt” that schools were safe. But the very next day, after millions of pupils had gone into school, the government reversed its position, telling schools they needed to offer remote learning until at least the February half term.
The limits of remote learning
For teachers, who had been scrambling to organise testing and a safe school environment, the announcement caused further stress. Online lessons had to be organised within days, and mass testing systems already in place had to be largely scrapped.
But while online learning is necessary right now, it is a poor substitute for face-to-face teaching, Michael Wilshaw, former head of Ofsted, tells me. “It’s not as good, and will never be as good. If you’re working in a really good school with a switched-on head, then your chance of getting good online programmes is high. But if not, then who knows what happens?”
Remote teaching increases academic inequality as home environments impact pupils’ ability to learn. A study by the Sutton Trust found that students from middle-class backgrounds were almost twice as likely to take part in online lessons every day, compared to their working-class counterparts.
Pupils in homes without broadband or necessary technology cannot attend online lessons. The government has delivered around 560,000 devices to students, and last month announced it had bought another 440,000 to distribute, but it is not nearly enough: Ofcom has estimated that up to 1.7m UK children do not have access to necessary equipment to work.
Devices that have been distributed also take too long to arrive. “Teachers are really frustrated,” Wilshaw says. “Some are having to go themselves and buy a laptop for these poor kids.” As well as technological drawbacks, lack of support from parents can also affect children’s home education. “Some youngsters come from noisy, sometimes dysfunctional homes,” Wilshaw says. “They don’t have a quiet space to get on and do the stuff. They don’t have parents who will say, ‘Go to your room and show me what you’ve done.’ So there’s that whole issue: how do you ensure that youngsters from poor backgrounds have the same opportunities as those from more prosperous backgrounds?”
Janet Sheriff, head teacher at Prince Henry’s Grammar School, a multi-academy trust in Yorkshire, says the gaps between richer and poorer schools in her trust have worsened during the pandemic. The effectiveness of online learning, she tells me, “depends on what kind of environment you’ve got within the home—whether the child has a quiet place to sit and work and not be disturbed.”
Primary school children in particular need their parents to encourage them to do their work and attend lessons. But while most parents try their best, some do not provide the necessary academic support, Sheriff says. “There are situations where the parents haven’t engaged with remote learning at all. And that’s where you get such big differences in terms of the impact of the lockdown and school closures.”
Wilshaw believes one solution during this lockdown would be to repurpose currently empty community buildings into socially distanced learning centres, which would provide study space for students with difficult home situations. But that would require investing in teachers to supervise the lessons, and working with local authorities—which Wilshaw believes the government has not wanted to do. “They’ve got to trust local authorities to make sure their area has provision in place for those youngsters for whom digital access is a problem.”
Plans for reopening
Another uncertainty facing teachers is exactly how grades will be assessed this year, now that exams have been cancelled. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has said the government will not use last year’s controversial algorithm which automatically adjusted pupils’ grades based on their school’s previous exam performance. He has indicated that internal teacher assessments, as well as possible mini external exams, will be used to award pupils’ grades—but has given no details about the process. Wilshaw stresses that the government must announce the detailed plan for assessing students soon. “Speaking as an ex-teacher, it’s really important that education staff have a clear timeline on how it will be done, and on what basis pupils will be judged,” he says. “The devil will be in the details.”
Amid all this uncertainty, the biggest question waiting to be resolved is when schools will permanently reopen.
Although schools are only confirmed closed until mid-February, Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove has said they could remain shut until March. Teachers need time to prepare schools for an influx of students when they re-open their doors.
Kevin Courtney, joint General Secretary of the National Education Union (NEU) backs the recent calls from teachers and some politicians to prioritise vulnerable education staff in the vaccination queue to make face-to-face teaching safer—although pupils could still transmit the virus to members of their community. “We have clinically extremely vulnerable teachers; it’s not safe for them to be in the classroom,” he says. “If they were vaccinated, it would reduce some stress in the system.”
The importance of funding
Many of the measures required to make schools safer require increased funding—but many say they have not received enough. More laptops, more PPE, and more space for distanced lessons cost money. So does finding the personnel for in-school testing.
The NEU says that once schools are given enough time to roll it out, weekly mass lateral flow testing could make schools significantly safer. “We would like to see that being led by public health, and it’s going to require a lot of staff,” Courtney says. “They should run tests weekly on every child. If you test every child every week, then you will find some children who are asymptomatic who might transmit [the virus].” Although some children could perform tests themselves, paid workers or volunteers would be required to test younger children and pupils with special needs.
Reducing class sizes could also reduce transmission in schools. The NEU advocates keeping lesson groups small, which requires more teachers, or teaching secondary school children in-person for part of the time and online at other times on a rotational basis. “That would reduce the number of children travelling every day, in school and back home again,” Courtney says. “It could make a real difference.”
Unions say the lack of funding is a hindrance to making schools Covid-secure. Well-ventilated rooms can reduce the risk of infection from coronavirus particles by over 70 per cent. But for schools, keeping the windows open requires heavy spending on heating in the colder months. “Schools will have to pay for a lot of additional heating,” Richards says. And the government hasn’t said who’s going to pay for this. The first thing they did for NHS trusts was wiping away all the debt. But they haven’t been half as generous with schools.”
Getting left out of the narrative
Throughout the crisis, the wellbeing of education staff has seemed like an afterthought. In particular, non-teaching staff, many of whom are UNISON members, have been overlooked by the media as well as the government, Richards believes. While it may be possible for some teachers to stand at a distance from their pupils in lessons, other workers, such as cleaners, assistants, and caterers, may have to be in closer proximity to children. “Our members [in this category] tend to be slightly older, and they tend to live in poorer areas because they’re paid less than teachers,” Richards says. “There’s a higher risk. There’s a significant lack of data for the impact [of coronavirus] on cleaners specifically in schools.”
In general, the government’s pandemic education policy has been defined by about-turns, indecision, and poor communication. For its part, a Department for Education spokesman told me: “The Government has acted consistently in the interests of children and young people throughout the pandemic and has worked to keep them in the classroom wherever possible, to support their development and wellbeing.”
“With the new variant putting pressure on the NHS, it is right that we acted to close schools to most students to help reduce the spread of the virus in the community. Contingency plans have been in place since September and swift decisions have been consistently taken to respond to changes in our understanding of the virus.”
Courtney says the Department has not engaged with their concerns during the pandemic. “This isn’t unique to my union. All the other unions, head teachers, school staff, feel it. The department works by making announcements that haven’t been properly consulted on. We’re always hoping that it will improve, and we are always ready to talk to them.”
