Schools

Schools in England have gone back today, with pupils taking lateral flow tests and being asked to wear masks in order to keep the risk of infections as low as possible.  Today Boris Johnson held a special press conference to mark what he described as an 'emotional' moment in the exit from lockdown. He said that the 'overwhelming feeling is one of relief' and that the 'greater risk now is keeping them out of school for a day longer'.  There are rumblings about whether the current plan for lifting restrictions is sustainable He praised teachers for getting schools ready and for teaching throughout the lockdown period, and parents for homeschooling while trying to hold down their own jobs.

Spare a thought for those due to sit their A-Levels next summer. They have already had considerable disruption to their education. But today’s announcement that this year’s A-Level grades will be done by teacher assessment risks compounding their misfortune.  It means that the current lower sixth will be competing for university places — and jobs — against those who have received teacher assessed grades, which are bound to be more generous than those that an exam would produce. (For all sorts of understandable reasons, teachers will want to give their pupils the benefit of the doubt when awarding potentially life-changing marks). The disadvantage the current lower sixth cohort is being put at is so obvious that the government will have to address it.

Helping children catch up on the best part of a year out of the classroom is one of the biggest tasks facing the government. On Wednesday, Gavin Williamson announced an extra £400 million in funding which schools can use to run summer programmes and other catch-up projects. That's on top of £300 million allocated last month and £1 billion announced last year. Ministers hope that their Recovery Premium will help schools support particularly disadvantaged pupils, who have fallen further behind than their peers as a result of having to do remote learning for so long. But they are also under pressure to show that they are thinking about the long-term, as even the best summer schools will not repair the damage to learning, confidence and other skills caused by the pandemic.

At some point in the next few months, life will return to something approaching normality. When that happens, the UK will have to confront all the problems that Covid has left behind: bruised public finances, long NHS waiting list and the rest. But the problem that Boris Johnson is most worried about, as I write in the Times today, is the effect on children of having been out of school for so long. This pandemic has probably wiped out a decade of progress in narrowing the attainment gap. There would undoubtedly be resistance from the education sector The government is hoping that small group tutoring can help make up much of the lost learning; it looks like the school day will be extended as part of this.

How can ministers stop one of the worst legacies of the pandemic being a generation of children left behind after a year out of the classroom? This week, when Boris Johnson confirmed 8 March as the earliest schools will return, he also announced money to help pupils catch up and a long-term plan for education. There's a glimpse of the scale of the task facing the government as it develops a long-term plan in this report from the Education Endowment Foundation, which found not only a significant fall in attainment for primary age pupils as a result of the disruption to the school year, but also a 'large and concerning attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and non-disadvantaged pupils'.

Teaching unions have spent much of the past year campaigning with the social media hashtag #CloseTheSchools. It’s a reminder of the imbalance in debate over education. Unions represent the adults, MPs represent their constituents, but who in Westminster speaks for children? In 2005 the Blair government sought to answer this question by creating a Children’s Commissioner, who would promote and protect the rights of children in decisions affecting their lives. Anne Longfield, the third to hold the job, is in the final few weeks of her six-year stint. She is spending those weeks campaigning for schools to re-open as soon as possible after the February half-term.

England's national lockdown is set to run on until at least March. Speaking in the Commons chamber this afternoon, Boris Johnson confirmed that the return of pupils to the classroom would be the first thing to be eased – and this would not happen in February as he had previously hoped. Addressing the House, Johnson said 'it will not be possible' to reopen schools in England after the half-term break next month. However, he remained hopeful that so long as the UK's vaccination programme remained on track, the return of pupils to the classroom would be able to begin from Monday 8 March. Given that No. 10 have no plans to relax any restrictions prior to schools reopening, this means the lockdown is here for the foreseeable.

A third stint in self-isolation and some extra time alone doesn't seem to have given Keir Starmer time to reflect on his opposition strategy. Last night Labour called on the government to prioritise the reopening of schools when the time comes to lift lockdown restrictions.  https://twitter.com/labourpress/status/1353832519913906177?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Clearly a good idea — so good in fact that it's already government policy. Boris Johnson has spent the best part of a year making clear that he will prioritise face-to-face education above almost all other social activity, telling the Commons three weeks ago that schools would be the first thing to reopen.