Teaching unions should hang their heads in shame
While they demand special treatment from the Government, children are simply collateral damage
It’s a well-known phenomenon. Schools break up in July and children disappear for six weeks. When they come back in September, the teachers find them practically feral. They haven’t just forgotten the content of their lessons; they have even forgotten how to sit at their desks properly so that a lesson can take place.
Imagine, then, the return to school that is going to take place this coming September, assuming teaching unions ever allow schools to return. Millions of children, already being given shamefully few hours of online instruction even where they could do more, will come back after a fivemonth break into a school system struggling to back-fill a huge educational gap. I doubt it is a scenario that excites any teacher.
Teaching unions, however, don’t seem to care. Far from helping teachers adapt and thinking about how to reopen safely and avoid such a long, damaging hiatus in children’s education, they have decided to wage war on the Government. On Monday, the latter announced cautious, conditional and partial reopening of schools from the start of June. So long as the epidemic is under control, it said, it plans to restart some classes for a few years of primary-school pupils. If all goes well, primaries will reopen further, subject to limits on class size.
This modest plan, similar to those enacted in other European countries, was immediately denounced. “Reckless,” declared Mary Bousted, head of the National Education Union. “Wholly premature,” proclaimed Patrick Roach of NASUWT, the teachers’ union. It will be a “considerable task” to make schools safe, added Dr Roach, and one that certainly shouldn’t be attempted before September. NASUWT may sue if the Government tries, it said, and unions have advised teachers “not to engage” with any discussions at all.
Now, we all have different attitudes to risk. Some people are exceedingly frightened by coronavirus and others aren’t bothered. But very, very few people think that society should make no attempt whatsoever to reopen between now and September.
Indeed, the unions’ position is so extreme that it raises the question of who exactly they are representing. Do teachers even support their union leaders’ behaviour? With firemen, police, factory workers, supermarket staff, construction workers, delivery drivers and many Government officials (not to mention the entire medical profession) being asked to go into work, do teachers really feel that their own return is so categorically, dangerously different that it cannot even be considered? Or is it just that union leaders want to make life difficult for the Government? The children in dire need of class time, especially those in cramped homes or abusive families, are presumably just collateral damage.
No one is suggesting that schools swing back into business as usual without sensible precautions. The pre-summer reopening is not some sort of virus free-for-all, but a first step towards normality. It obviously should not involve forcing anyone who is clinically vulnerable to go into work – nor has the Government suggested otherwise. But the reality is that schools need to find a way to educate the broad majority of children, deploying the broad majority of teachers, in difficult circumstances. Most schools have already been operating at reduced capacity to teach the children of key workers. The new plan means letting more pupils come back in. Parents will have the choice over whether to let their children participate without the threat of fines, allowing schools to build confidence.
Like many workplaces, schools no doubt need to rearrange themselves to allow for social distancing. They may need to designate certain hallways as one-way corridors, install handwashing stations and zone playgrounds to keep children apart. Some schools may require groups of pupils to attend on alternate days; some may be able to accommodate more of their pupils than others. It won’t be perfect and it won’t be definitive. It will probably take some weeks of adjustment to get right. But all schools ought to be drawing up plans and training teachers to implement them as a matter of urgency. That can’t happen if teachers obey the command “not to engage” with school management or the Government.
Union officials claim that they merely want to “know the science” and “make sure it’s safe”. They have published long, repetitive checklists of tasks for schools to complete before they reopen, which look more obstructionist than helpful (schools must, for example, ensure the “servicing of reprographic equipment”, according to the NASUWT). Dr Bousted, of the NEU, has even suggested she wants all children sprayed with disinfectant at the school gate, a practice so pointless and potentially dangerous that scientists in Singapore are pleading with building owners to scale it down. Before it will discuss reopening, the NEU says it wants to know scientific facts such as what the virus transmission rate between children is, what the effect of school operation is on the epidemic and whether the Government’s contacttracing system is going to work.
Well, golly, welcome to the club. We would all love definitive answers to these sorts of questions. The entire world’s resources are being put towards the task. But the evidence is mixed. Some studies suggest that children catch the virus just as much as adults, but don’t display symptoms. Others suggest they may not catch it at the same rate. Some countries, like the Netherlands, say analysis shows school closures made very little difference to a fall in transmission. Others, like Hong Kong, maintain it is still necessary to keep them shut. Still others, like Sweden, never even closed schools. One fact we do know, across all jurisdictions, is that children are at very low risk from the disease. This suggests that carefully opening up schools and monitoring the effect is probably one of the safer steps we can take towards normal life.
We all need to learn to live with Covid-19. The Government needs to do its job by setting up a system to monitor and manage the virus. But until there is a vaccine, it is not going to be able to guarantee our complete safety, just as it cannot guarantee we won’t be hit by a bus on the way to work. If we can find a way to reopen workplaces and schools without fuelling a surge in cases, unions should be helping to make it work, rather than issuing legal threats and whipping up outrage. Instead of joining the national effort, they have staked out an extreme position they will struggle to defend. The result is greater stress on parents and educational opportunities lost to their children, as the empty weeks drift by.
We would all love definitive answers to all sorts of questions. The entire world’s resources are being put towards the task