Pupils and parents ‘in the dark’ about new term dates

PARENTS, pupils and teachers are being ‘left in the dark’ about whether classroom teaching will resume in the middle of next month.

Nicola Sturgeon yesterday admitted that she cannot be certain that face-to-face learning will begin again as planned on January 18.

But Deputy First Minister John Swinney insisted schools are ‘safe’ and urged parents to continue sending pupils until their Christmas holidays begin – and said he wanted to stick with the return of classroom teaching next month.

Scottish Conservative education spokesman Jamie Greene said: ‘While everyone accepts the situation surrounding coronavirus is a moving picture, the SNP Government are leaving parents in the dark over what will be happening in the new year.

‘Little detail has been given as to why education has been put on hold and how on earth parents are expected to work when their childcare options have been taken away.

‘There is no good reason why all pupils cannot return to some form of learning from January 5 as was originally planned, more so given the huge loss of teaching that so many have already suffered.’

It was announced at the weekend that only vulnerable pupils and those who have parents who are key workers will return to school in person on Tuesday, January 5.

All other pupils will receive remote online learning beginning on January 11, with schools reopening fully from January 18 if ministers are confident coronavirus is under control.

At her coronavirus briefing yesterday, Miss Sturgeon said: ‘We have not changed our views on the transmission risks, or in our view the relative low risk in schools, but this is a recognition of the overall situation in the country, necessitated because of this new strain.

‘We have said very clearly, at least until January 18 there will be remote online learning but we’ve equally said we are determined if at all possible to get schools back to normal from January 18.

‘We are simply being clear at the moment that, given the nature of what we are dealing with right now, we can’t be absolutely certain but we will keep parents updated.

‘There will be guidance about how the first couple of weeks of school will operate issued very soon to help parents and others to understand that.’

Trade unions have been raising concerns about the threat to teachers and other staff if schools remain open.

Dr Patrick Roach, General Secretary of the NASUWT union, said: ‘The level of threat from Covid has now increased significantly and this is reflected in the decision made by the First Minister at the weekend to impose new restrictions on the whole population.

‘In this context, we believe there is no justification for keeping schools open this week when remote learning could be introduced to keep pupils and school staff safe.

‘Moving to remote learning could help to protect life and health, which surely should be the first priority at the time of increased threat to us all. This determination to keep schools open at all costs is reckless.’

Larry Flanagan, of the EIS teaching union, told the BBC’s Good

Morning Scotland programme that ‘one of the issues’ around the new variant appears to be that teenagers in particular are involved in the transmission chain.

He said: ‘That’s why in Kent and London, even before we identified the new variant, they were looking to close schools because teenagers seem to be fairly critical now.’

He added that a ‘major rethink’ on how education was delivered would need to be carried out if teenagers were found to be critical in spreading the virus.

But Mr Swinney said it was the Scottish Government’s ‘ highest priority’ to maintain school education for children in Scotland.

He said parents should not be keeping their children at home, stating: ‘Our schools are safe. So children and young people that should be going to school this week... should go to school.’

He added: ‘I want to stick to 18 January and we will be reviewing the situation as we go into the new year to... make sure that our schools are operating on a safe basis.’

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson was last night also unable to offer any guarantee that children in England will return to school as planned after Christmas.

‘Teenagers seem to be critical’

THE nightmare of lock down home l earning was only just beginning to recede – but now the horror movie has a sequel. Just when you thought Covid was relaxing its grip on our lives, a new mutant strain threatens to cause yet more havoc.

That means uncertainty over the start of the term after Christmas: pupils won’t go back to school until January 18 at the earliest.

In the meantime, there will be a spell of online education – a prospect sufficient to spark painful flashbacks to the dark days of early lockdown.

Back then remote classes were somewhere between patchy and non-existent, and exasperated parents took on much of the burden.

Clustered round kitchen tables with their children, they became involuntary teachers overnight, grappling with everything from basic spelling to algebra.

This time around, there’s more confidence that online lessons will work, or at least that they will happen – it won’t be as chaotic as it was at the height of the pandemic.

Quite what that’s based on is anyone’s guess, particularly when teaching staff will be looking after the children of key workers and vulnerable youngsters.

It’s a juggling act that will require maximum dexterity, though the truth is, as we all know, it’s unworkable – making the start of the year a write- off. That matters because kids have lost out on so much already after schools were shut for five months in 2020, while tens of thousands have missed classes due to Covid – either after contracting it or as a result of self-isolation.

Scandalous

Large numbers of pupils logged out of virtual classrooms completely back in March, meaning any hope of closing the ‘ attainment gap’ was dashed. Experts warn we’re still unprepared for online learning, nine months on, with Professor Lindsay Paterson, of the University of Edinburgh, condemning a ‘scandalous’ lack of preparation.

Not unreasonably, he said Nicola Sturgeon should have spelt out the ‘specific steps that teachers should take’ when she made her announcement on Saturday evening that classrooms will not reopen after the festive break. Instead, he said that teachers had been left to ‘ scrabble around’ to find teaching materials that had been prepared in England and abroad.

His warning was echoed by Scotland’s children’s commissioner Bruce Adamson, who said he was ‘deeply concerned’ that online learning was being provided ‘inconsistently’, with not enough guidance or support provided to schools.

Ministers say they’re investing £25million to address ‘digital exclusion’ in schools, and that ‘funding allocations for… devices and connectivity solutions have now been made to all 32 local authorities’.

More pupils should have tablets now than back in March and April, but there are bound to be kids left to their own devices – or lack of them – next month.

With working from home encouraged wherever possible, pupils may also be sharing computers and broadband connections with parents who are trying to keep an eye on their children’s learning while holding down their jobs.

At the weekend, the First Minister said she was determined to keep schools open, at the same time as she ordered them to shut for most children for about a month – and let’s face it, they could stay closed to the majority of pupils beyond January 18.

But her bombshell for pupils and their families was sneaked in after the news which ruined so many Christmases.

Clearly, the hope was we’d all miss it as we rang round relatives telling them to cancel flights or rail journeys, or wondered what on earth we’d do with all the food and drink we’d bought in for guests.

A decision to close nurseries until January 18 was posted on a government Twitter account with fewer than 10,000 followers. It was all a bit of a mess, but that’ s fitting, because education has been an afterthought throughout the coronavirus crisis – and for the SNP for the last 13 years it was a priority that lagged far behind independence.

Yet it’s shameful that after a year of setbacks, schoolkids are likely to be lockdown losers yet again. That shouldn’t surprise anyone who has kept track of teaching unions applying pressure on government to shut schools down – a process that began soon after they reopened in August.

For pupils expecting to go back to sit their preliminary exams, the changes to the start of term will only add to their anxieties.

Schools have been told prelims aren’t necessary, given that formal exams have been ditched this spring in favour of teachers using their ‘holistic’ judgment.

Covid mutation means this decision may seem prescient, even if it was taken later than it should have been, though some countries such as Germany managed to hold exams this year in the midst of the first wave of coronavirus.

Shocked

The cancellation of exams is a tacit admission that remote education doesn’t really work – if it did, exams might be going ahead.

There’s no evidence that the new Covid variant is more transmissible among children than the wider population, so schools will remain shut until beyond mid- January on what Chief Medical Officer Dr Gregor Smith described as a ‘precautionary’ principle.

Miss Sturgeon insisted yesterday she was ‘determined if at all possible to get schools back to normal’ after January 18. But how many of us would be shocked if the closures dragged on, given the possibility that the toughest lockdown restrictions could remain in place until Easter.

‘Blended learning’ will be back on the table – a euphemism for part-time schooling – a plan that was dropped earlier this year when it became clear some kids would be in physical classrooms for just one or two days a week.

This is another seismic shift in policy, with no prior parliamentary debate, on the back of mounting concern over the new Covid strain.

But the argument that schools are part of our critical infrastructure hasn’t gone away, and nor has the legitimate concern about thousands of kids switching off laptops or iPads, if they’re lucky enough to have them.

Meanwhile, John Swinney found time to retweet Miss Sturgeon’ s apparently straight-faced pronouncement about the urgent need for extending the Brexit transition period – while continuing to agitate for another independence referendum.

Precious little else was posted on his account about the looming turmoil for schools – but then serially incompetent Mr Swinney has had a year of abrupt U-turns; could we really trust anything he says anyway?

An administration that has failed to deliver on promises can’t be trusted to mastermind the transition back to a prolonged period of school closures, if that’s what we’re facing – and it looks likely.

It’s an appalling betrayal of children after months of disappointment and uncertainty – and one that will only swell the ranks of digital dropouts whose life chances have been drastically reduced.