The Guardian view on plans for primary schools: stop bullying teachers
There are solid reasons to wish for as many children in England as possible to return to school before September, even though the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have decided to keep their schools shut. Education is a human right. Since March, most pupils have been missing out. There is broad agreement that existing inequalities have been exacerbated during lockdown, with poorer children losing out more than richer ones, and a minority of vulnerable children at risk of permanent harm. Unlike some other jobs, teaching is not one that can indefinitely be done remotely. Bereaved children in need of support are a particular cause for concern.
But if ministers and others, including the children’s commissioner for England, are right to treat the reopening of schools to more children as a priority, there is no justification for the way that a campaign to make this happen has developed over recent days. First, following weeks of discussions with unions, ministers chose to spring the 1 June reopening date on them. Then, when unions continued to challenge ministers, they were attacked.
The unsurprising result of this bullying approach has been that around 12 local authorities, mostly in the north of England where infection rates are higher, have announced that they will not reopen primary schools to three year groups a week on Monday. Elsewhere schools and councils are making arrangements, writing to parents, and fielding questions, with just 5% of teachers reported by one survey to feel safe. For families as well as politicians, balancing the risks of sending children back with the risks of keeping them at home is a delicate business. Dealing with people who are scared of being killed by a vicious lung infection requires tact, and above all information. There is no sense in making existing recruitment and retention problems worse.
Information is what teachers have repeatedly asked for, and it reflects badly upon Boris Johnson’s government that it has opted to hector rather than persuade. The policy of containment relies on a system of testing, tracking and tracing new cases. An enormous amount rides on what experts deem “safe”. How low does the “R rate” need to be for schools to reopen? To what extent will regional variations count?
What is the risk that staff and pupils will run by spending whole days in groups of up to 16 (15 children, one adult)? Given what we know about variations in death rates, do calculations take age, sex and ethnicity into account? Is it “safe” for a teacher or pupil living with a vulnerable relative to go back to school? Can the testing system that failed to protect care home residents now be trusted? When will arrangements be in place to “track and trace” any new outbreaks?
There are reasons to think, as well as hope, that primary schools may be able to find ways to restart learning safely. Children, young adults and women are all less likely than older men to become seriously ill from Covid-19, and 85% of England’s primary school teachers are women, many of them young. The reopening of schools in some other countries, including Denmark, has provided tentatively encouraging signs.
But to behave as though such observations amount to a satisfactory risk assessment for almost 17,000 English primary schools is naive to the point of recklessness. The UK has handled the coronavirus badly. The countries whose experience is closest to ours, Italy and Spain, are keeping their schools shut until September. So are the three other nations of the UK. There are reasons to support the idea of getting English children back into education sooner, and not just because it would enable their parents to work. But the highhanded approach being taken by politicians and others to the rational concerns of teachers is currently in danger of cancelling these out.