Teachers split as unions fight schools reopening

The fight between the government and teachers’ unions over school reopening appears not to have been resolved – yet – following a meeting between the unions and government scientific advisers today. The National Education Union’s Kevin Courtney stated that “many questions we asked were not addressed”. While he welcomed the promise to publish the scientific evidence behind the decision he said the criteria that was being used to determine whether to reopen schools needs to be clarified.

As things stand the government plans to reopen schools to students in nursery, reception, Year 1, and Year 6 followed by students in Years 10 and 12 who will be taking exams next year. However, teachers’ unions have said that the government has not been clear about how much risk pupils, and teachers, will face when schools reopen. In response the Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has warned the unions’ against scaremongering. Here has found an unlikely ally in the form of former Labour Education Secretary David Blunkett who said yesterday he was “surprised” and “deeply critical” of the unions’ attitude, saying complete safety was inevitably not possible.

When I spoke to teachers about the issue, I found widespread dislike of online teaching, but uncertainty over whether schools should reopen.

Lucy Kellaway, a former journalist turned secondary school teacher and founder of Now Teach, declared that she was “really hating” remote teaching calling it “drudgery for my students, and drudgery for me”. Other teachers I spoke to concurred, one commenting “nobody became a teacher to sit at home all day answering emails”.

On top of dislike of online teaching worry about its impact on students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, was universal. While schools have continued to remain open for children of key workers and vulnerable children very few in the latter category have actually attended.

Teachers spoke of the difficulty of providing these children with the pastoral care they needed when they were outside of their classroom. In terms of academic impact some saw online teaching as “sustainable” if non-ideal, but others were far more worried and spoke of how existing inequalities were being widened.

Schools efforts at online provision have been uneven with the best schools often managing excellently, while those lower down the league table struggling. Similarly, while the strongest pupils tended to be managing those who needed more help in the classroom were in some cases doing “almost nothing”.

The sheer social shock of the lockdown has also meant that some schools are focusing almost entirely on welfare provision over education. Steve Chalke, founder of the Oasis Trust that runs 53 schools in England, has been outspoken about how middle-class families find are finding the lockdown much easier than the less well off. Kellaway spoke of children going hungry, and how her daughter’s school had turned itself into a foodbank.

Despite the essentially universal dislike of current arrangements opinion was still split over whether it was wise to reopen.

One teacher admitted to being “conflicted”. His worries about vulnerable students’ reliance of schools for meals and adult support was tempered by his awareness that many of these students lived with elderly relatives in homes which would not allow for self-isolation should it be necessary. While young enough not to be concerned about his own health he was certain that teachers who were high-risk or living with high-risk people were “very worried”. As things stood, he was “always going to side with my union”, and was generally not in favour of relaxing the lockdown given that the UK’s death rate was among the highest in Europe’s.

Some teachers are keen for a reopening. The Oasis Trust is planning to follow government plans and let students in the selected years return 1 June. Chalke also argued that as schools had stayed open to look after some children this was not a reopening, but merely the next step taken as coronavirus rates declined.

Kellaway said she understood that the teacher’s union leaders had to look out for the safety of their members but she was nonetheless “exasperated” with them and felt that if the government wanted to reopen schools “teachers should not stand in their way”. She had just signed the petition Teachers for Teaching petition that urged the government “to prioritise a return to school as soon as it is safe to do so”. Ultimately, she argued that we needed to acknowledge there were “trade-offs”, that the risks of not reopening schools were vast, and that the risks of reopening were unclear but appeared to be declining.

Indeed, there will inevitably be some risk that accompanies reopening. It will be difficult to minimise such as social distancing will be impractical in narrow corridors and crowded classrooms.

Chalke, however, says it is not that clear cut pointing out that conditions in schools will vary considerably depending on the building. As things stand, Oasis schools had done a thorough risk assessment of every building and “could guarantee social distance”. In addition, Oasis had supplies of PPE it could distribute to staff and students.

As for schools that were less prepared Chalke stated everyone should “go at a safe speed”, but that people should “get on with it” in terms making preparations to enable this as they were not going to get any easier. Many parents will agree.