Swinney must hope schools U-turn works

Education Secretary John Swinney’s shock declaration that schools will reopen fully come August must surely rank among the greatest U-turns ever at Holyrood.

After spending weeks outlining and promoting his vision for a blended model involving both home and classroombased learning, the deputy first minister’s announcement yesterday that, coronavirus allowing, schools would return on August 11 was one that took teachers, parents and pupils by surprise.

There is no argument that the most desirable outcome for Scotland’s young people is for them to be in school full-time, learning in the traditional manner, working towards exams and with the ability to socialise with friends.

That schools should be operating normally wherever possible from the start of the new session was welcomed in some quarters, not least by parents worried about juggling a job and home-schooling.

But, for others, it raised as many questions as it answered. For a start, how feasible will it be for schools with a full roll to maintain constant oversight of Covid-19 mitigation measures and minimise the risks to children, teachers, school staff and the wider community in which they are located?

And how will children who don’t live in the immediate environs of their school get to and from it each day in a safe manner.

In recent days, some individual schools in Tayside have tried to tackle those and myriad other problems and begun to communicate their plans for the new session.

They included timetables with different year groups attending at different times and a warning that fewer pupils could be accommodated on school buses.

But those plans are no longer worth the paper on which they are written and will have to be redrawn to accommodate the new vision.

Only time will tell if Mr Swinney’s gamble has paid off and the new one-size-fits-all approach adopted by the Scottish Government is the right one for the times we are facing.

Mr Swinney knew he was walking into a minefield when he took to his feet. His task now is to galvanise the education community and make sure the new strategy works.