Reform for postpandemic world

The imperative of social distancing in combination with networked information technology present a wonderful opportunity to revolutionise the working and education week in Canterbury and throughout Kent. We could abolish the rush hour, permanently reduce air pollution induced by road congestion and accelerate our collective progress to carbon neutrality.

I hope that most office workers will continue to be given the option to work at least part time from home, even when the Covid19 pandemic passes. In some other occupations flexible hours or shift working already prevail. We have seen that in education, distance learning is feasible for all age groups except perhaps the very youngest children. There is currently much fuss about the availability of space in schools, and yet the duration of the academic year means that school buildings lie empty for half the days of the calendar year. In this season those buildings are typically unoccupied for half of daylight hours, even on a weekday. The utilisation rate of university teaching buildings is yet worse.

So how about some imagination from Kent County Council as our local education authority, academy trusts, head teachers and university vice-chancellors? Why not experiment with morning schools and afternoon schools, or morning and afternoon lectures, using the same set of buildings? Even better, offer school pupils and parents alternate weeks or fortnights over longer terms with longer days? Or a Monday to Wednesday school and a Thursday to Saturday school? And why not a continuous semester system for our universities, with a choice of terms for students throughout the calendar year in each faculty? We would need to ask teachers, other school staff and university lecturers to vary their hours accordingly.we might need to add to their numbers. But those changes are surely worth funding? Some extra money has already been made available by the Department for Education. Now is the moment for our education leaders in Kent to ask the government for extra temporary help. Concomitant savings would ensue over time in school and university building construction programmes to offset the human resource cost.

Some capital projects could be put on hold immediately.

If we adopt radical reform of the organisation of education in the manner I suggest, parents like me could be sure in the short run that our children can return to school quickly and safely on a new footing. In the long run they could participate with adults in a less stressful, less congested, less polluted normal for our postpandemic daily round.

Peter R. Styles

St Augustine’s Road, Canterbury