Calls to cancel 11-plus test continue

No sharing of toys, removing everything from classrooms which can’t easily be washed or wiped and limiting the books and resources children take home.

These are just some of the latest guidelines sent to schools by the government as they attempt to prepare for the phased reopening of the county’s primaries.

The planning guide, published last Thursday, is described as the ‘next level down of detail’ related to bringing back more children to classrooms since schools closed because of the coronavirus outbreak on March 20.

Alongside key worker children, should the transmission or R rate remain low enough, children in Kent and Medway in Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 will be able to go back on June 1 after the half-term break.

But the planning guide lays bare the extensive number of things head teachers and school staff will need to consider or put in place before welcoming back these first pupils.

Lidded bins in classrooms

Kent families need “quick answers” around the future of the 11-plus test, a council committee was told.

Lobbying to cancel the September exams continues due to fears for children’s mental health and differences in the level of homeschooling during the coronavirus lockdown.

Kent County Council’s

(KCC) scrutiny committee met on Tuesday, for the first time since the UK’s Covid19 outbreak in March, to discuss a range of county-wide issues, including school meal vouchers, school transport and the Kent Test.

KCC’s Liberal Democrat education spokesman, Cllr Trudy Dean, who attended the meeting, called for urgent action and said: “It’s important that members of where tissues and rubbish is double bagged, soap and hot water in every toilet and if possible within classrooms and the need for all ‘frequently touched surfaces’ to be regularly and thoroughly cleaned each day are amongst the hygiene guidelines suggested schools must address.

Whilst staff will also ‘need to explicitly teach and supervise health and hygiene arrangements such as handwashing, tissue disposal and toilet flushing’.

As previously reported, the guidelines set out plans for half classes of no more than 15 children - where contact is limited with other groups and staff within the school through staggered start, finish and break times - and social distancing is maintained where possible.

Should staffing cover be an issue, the planning guide says, headteachers can use experienced teaching assistants to lead groups under the guidance of a teacher or borrow staff to cover from other schools whilst ensuring ‘cover is agreed on a weekly basis, not daily, to limit contacts’. And whilst most schools open for keyworker children have adopted staffing rotas, these too are now being discouraged. the public know the answer to the Kent Test question very quickly.”

Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield last week called for the 11-plus exams to be suspended as she hopes to avoid “heightened anxiety” for school children in the months leading up to assessments.

Kent councillors have also called for urgent action to be taken to address the issue during the virtual scrutiny meeting.

Cllr Dean told the 13-person committee: “Parents have got to make decisions in June as to whether to submit their child for the Kent Test or not.

“They might be influenced by whether that is assessed as normal - a series of three hour tests - or whether they would be happy for their child to be assessed by a school teacher based assessment, which is the alternative.”

Other education concerns raised by councillors at the meeting include transport logistical problems and issues around the school meal vouchers scheme, which has seen some school officials delivering “food parcels” to children at their family home.

Medway Council says it is awaiting feedback from the Department for Education on whether any changes will be made to the test.

It will let schools know in due course and officers are continuing to plan for the assessments as usual - taking into account possible need for social distancing.

Registration in Medway will be open as usual from June 1 to June 29.