TOP SCHOOLS: WE CAN JAB ALL TEACHERS
Heads send Boris bold plan to vaccinate one million staff at half- term – and MoS urges him to back them
BRITAIN’S top schools have unveiled a bold plan to vaccinate the country’s entire teaching staff and get pupils back into the classroom within weeks.
Headteachers have drawn up a detailed blueprint to get the educational workforce, including support staff, inoculated over the February half-term week.
The ambitious scheme could prove a political lifeline to Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he faces mounting calls to put teachers at the front of the queue for jabs and prevent more catastrophic damage to the prospects of millions of locked-down children. Under the emergency scheme, 150 independent schools and state academies would become vaccination hubs with medically trained staff inoculating school workers for 16 hours a day.
The plan’s architects claim that ‘ most or even all’ of England’s one million school and nursery
teachers, teaching assistants and support staff, including dinner ladies and caretakers, could be vaccinated within the week.
It comes as Ministers have been downplaying expectations schools could reopen after halfterm, as originally envisaged.
Last week, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson could only say he ‘hoped’ children would be back in classrooms by Easter, let alone February.
However, England’s Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield, said primary schools must begin to re- open after half-term or children in deprived areas ‘will fall even further behind’ their peers.
The new vaccination proposal, which would incur no cost for the Government, has been drawn up by two academy chains, a private school group and the respected Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, which represents nearly 300 independent schools, including the likes of Eton and Harrow.
Ministers have yet to respond to their blueprint, which has been revealed as:
A Mail on Sunday poll found 40 per cent of people believe their mood and state of mind have declined since the start of the pandemic, and 33 per cent of parents say the mental health of their children has worsened;
A record 478,248 vaccine jabs were delivered on Friday, taking the total to 6,329,968, of which 5,861,351 were first doses;
The number of reported positive Covid-19 cases fell by 18 per cent – from 41,346 last Saturday to 33,552 yesterday, but there were 1,348 new deaths;
Experts accused Mr Johnson of ‘exploiting public fear’ over the virus following disputed claims that the mutant Kent variant was 30 per cent more lethal than the original;
The medical director of Public Health England rejected calls from the British Medical Association to halve the gap between the two doses of vaccine from 12 weeks to six;
The Intensive Care Society said one in five nursing staff is suffering post-traumatic stress disorder – more than the rate among war veterans – as more than 4,000 patients are now on ventilators across the UK;
An ambitious campaign by the Mail to deliver laptops to locked-down pupils struggling with lessons got under way;
Tory MPs urged the Prime Minister to publish militarystyle ‘multiple pathways’ out of lockdown with one saying that people would not tolerate ‘living like troglodytes’ indefinitely;
The Government was set to make visitors from some highrisk counties quarantine in hotels – but stop short of a blanket rule;
AstraZeneca warned EU countries it will cut deliveries of its Covid- 19 vaccine in another blow to Europe’s spluttering inoculation drive;
A Mail on Sunday investigation reveals how foreign firms have handed billions of pounds to their wealthy investors after taking out cheap Covid loans backed by the British taxpayer.
Downing Street has been increasingly pessimistic that infection rates will fall quickly enough for schools to reopen next month, with some officials warning parents should ‘prepare to wait until May’.
However, a chorus of eminent education experts last night urged the Prime Minister to intervene and back the schools vaccination plan to speed up that timetable.
Sir Anthony Seldon, a leading historian and former master at Wellington College, said: ‘It is desperately important to get all schools back fully open for the sake of parents, guardians and their children. This is a really magnificent plan. No 10 needs to start listening to and welcoming ideas like this.’
Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools and head of Ofsted between 2012 and 2016, said: ‘I would strongly support the Government putting teachers and support staff in schools at the very top of the list in terms of vaccination. As soon as that happens, then we can get schools open again. I’m in full support of this.’
Earlier this month, the Headmasters’ and Headmistress’ Conference and Cognita, a private education group with 40 independent schools, joined the Academies Enterprise Trust and Ormiston Academies Trust, which together run 98 state academies, to create their plan.
Top private schools that have volunteered to be vaccination hubs i ncl ude Shrewsbury School and Oswestry School in Shropshire, South Hampstead
High School in London, Bootham School in York, Plymouth College and Ipswich School.
In a letter sent to Mr Johnson, Mr Williamson and Health Secretary Matt Hancock on January 10, the schools said: ‘The single initiative that could help families cope better with the lockdown, preserve our children’s learning and mental health and help to encourage the economy to restart would be to ensure that schools can open safely after the February half term.’
They said their sites have the refrigerators required to store the vaccine and a ‘large force of medically trained members of staff’ who would be able to administer the jabs.
Last night, Chris McGovern, a former education policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher and chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, described the offer as a ‘no brainer’ He added: ‘The Government needs to wake up, get a move on, get a grip and get this done.’
Tory MP Robert Halfon, chairman of the Education Select Committee, said: ‘The Government should be doing everything possible to get all schools open after half term.If you get all teachers and support staff vaccinated it means schools can reopen sooner.’
A No 10 source said there were no current plans to change the priority order for vaccines.
‘This will save learning and mental health’
TO THE dismay of those who will never forgive him for Brexit, Boris Johnson is again demonstrating his ability to achieve success where others fail or will not dare.
The mass vaccination against Covid, itself the fruit of brilliant British science, is now bringing hope and comfort to millions – hope for those who long for release, comfort for those who fear the virus.
It turns out that it is perfectly possible, under strong leadership and intelligent direction, for the Government machine to deliver a major project, on time and efficiently.
Let us hope that the lessons are learned for the future, and that other state projects will follow this example.
It is, of course, absolutely right that the vaccination programme has targeted the most vulnerable first, and this should certainly continue until all these categories have been given protection.
But that moment will provide an opportunity for a new and ingenious initiative, which The Mail on Sunday today urges Mr Johnson and his colleagues to consider actively.
A group of top schools in the private and state sector have come together to make a spectacular, public-spirited offer.
They are suggesting t hat t he Government uses t heir premises and trained staff to set up dozens of extra vaccination centres. And then, once medical priority cases have been dealt with, they propose a bold programme to immunise teachers and other school staff in time for the second half of the current term. At the very least this should make it possible to reopen primary schools and the examination years of secondary schools. At a stroke, it would sweep aside many of the objections to school reopening and restore one of the most important parts of our national life.
Surely the teachers’ unions, who rightly proclaim the importance of their profession to our economy and society, would welcome this recognition that they are correct?
In truth there are few more urgent tasks than to find a way to get the schools – and then the universities – to open up again.
Schools perform many more functions than simple education. They provide routine and early experience of good work habits to their students. They provide the social interaction that makes the difference between life and solitary existence. They provide proper meals to children from homes where such things are sadly rare. They sometimes allow teachers to spot serious problems at home that might never otherwise come to light.
And, of course, they free parents to go out to work during school hours.
Many schools have coped extraordinarily well with the challenge of remote learning, and this newspaper congratulates those who have.
But others have done less well – not least because of the grave shortage of computers in poorer homes, which make the idea of distance learning more or less impossible for some youngsters.
But in general it is true that the lockdown of schools has hit the children of the poor far harder than the children of the well-off middle classes.
In 21st Century Britain, which the Prime Minister is publicly committed to levelling up, this gap is intolerable and needs to be closed. One of the most effective ways of doing so is to get the schools fully open again, as soon as reasonably possible.
In the same spirit with which he has tackled the vaccination programme, Mr Johnson should now accept this generous and thoughtful suggestion.