The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
BACK TO SCHOOL
COVID: U-turn as Education Secretary John Swinney announces pupils will return full-time after summer
Schools across Fife are set to return to full-time learning in August as long as progress on reducing the spread of Covid-19 continues. Education Secretary John Swinney announced the move yesterday following weeks of concerns over how the so-called blended model would work and its potential to further harm the prospects of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Perthshire North MSP also unveiled a £100 million spending package to support the return to school and help children “recover lost ground”. Mr Swinney said the 2,000 infectious people in Scotland represented a 90% drop since May, adding: “If we all continue to do what is right, and if we can further suppress this terrible virus, the government believes we should prepare for children to be able to return to school full-time from August.”
The education secretary has unveiled plans for a return to full-time schooling by August, after claiming the government was “surprised” at the decline of the virus since May.
John Swinney made an emergency statement to the Scottish Parliament yesterday in which he announced the major policy change, stating that schools should prepare to go back on this basis if progress continues to be made on suppressing the virus.
In delivering his statement, the education secretary also revealed that £100 million would be made available over the next two years to help support the return to school and help children “recover any lost ground”.
Mr Swinney has drawn criticism over the last couple of weeks after stating that schools across Scotland were “unlikely to return to normality for the duration of the 2020-21 academic year, with pupils returning to school around half the week.
However, speaking in the Scottish Parliament, the education secretary said although the outlook on May 21 was “bleak”, his government had since been “surprised” by how sharply the virus has declined in the last month.
He said: “We have seen Scotland make significant progress. There are now only 2,000 infectious people in Scotland, a reduction of around 90% since May.
“There has been a sustained downward trend in Covid-19 deaths and cases in intensive care now stand at a fraction of what they were.
“If we stay on track, if we all continue to do what is right, and if we can further suppress this terrible virus, the government believes we should prepare for children to be able to return to school full-time from August.”
However, Mr Swinney said this remains “conditional and dependent” on ongoing scientific and health advice and emphasised that the ‘blended learning’ model remains a back-up option that the government “may need to enact” should the virus run out of control again.
He added that when the government first made its plans in May for pupils to return to school on a blended learning model, they “could not have imagined we would have made as much progress in virus suppression as we have”.
Plans are also being drawn up for the 2021 exam diet to go ahead but Mr Swinney said there may be a delay by a “matter of weeks”.
However, opposition colleagues hit out at the approach taken by the Scottish Government, with Conservative MSP Jamie Greene claiming parents had been left “scunnered” by the initial proposals when they were revealed in May.
He added: “There has been a vacuum in leadership and handling of this issue.
“Today’s U-turn has been forced on the government after relentless campaigning from all quarters; political, academic, charitable but most importantly by parents themselves to whom we owe the most credit in all of this.”
Iain Gray, Scottish Labour’s education spokesman, said Mr Swinney had said just 10 days ago that the blended learning model would last a year, adding that “now at the last possible moment” the education secretary had come up with a “completely new plan”.
Scottish Greens education spokesman Ross Greer emphasised the importance of introducing regular testing for school staff and called on the education secretary to confirm when this could become a reality.
Mr Swinney said he was “very supportive” of testing to build confidence among the teaching profession, adding that it would form part of the “detailed” work being carried out by the newly formed education recovery group.
Mr Greer added: “A great number of people will be breathing a sigh of relief at the announcement that pupils will return to school full-time in August, but for teachers, school support staff and their families, the anxiety will now have dramatically increased.
“The Greens have proposed regular testing of all school staff.
“I’m glad that Mr Swinney is now supportive of this proposal but he needs to confirm immediately that it will be a reality when schools return in August.”
Colin Borland, director of devolved nations for the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), said employers would “breathe a sigh of relief”.
He said: “The education secretary has made the right call by ensuring that schools will offer full-time education after the summer holidays.
“The small business community would urge the Scottish Government to use this momentum and back day nurseries and other childcare providers, so they can also open full-time on August 11, or earlier, as recommended in our recent FSB report.”
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.