DAVID BLUNKETT

The failure to get all children back to school is a betrayal of young lives. There HAS to be a solution, implores Labour’s former Education Secretary (and ex-teacher)

EVERy parent and teacher knows that a child who misses just a couple of weeks from school can fall rapidly behind his or her classmates. Which somehow puts into perspective the crisis facing a generation of children who have now gone without school for three months because of the coronavirus lockdown.

I find it astounding that the Government has given up plans to get all primary school children back before the summer holidays. The Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, says it is simply not ‘feasible’.

But this is indefensible. I can only assume it means Mr Williamson and Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary — who said secondary schools may not even open by September — regard investing in our children as a second-order priority.

When I became education secretary in 1997, our policy for the country could be summed up in three words: education, education, education. We realised that unless our children had equality of access to learning, we would lose out as a country and as a global player in the world economy.

Much has changed in the 23 years since then but one thing has not — the paramount importance of education.

Mobilise

I cannot fathom why the Government is not making it an absolute priority now, by giving schools the level of importance it gave the Health Service when we were first faced with the coronavirus. As a country, we pulled together and responded with imagination, courage and creativity to support the NHS.

So why do we not have the same drive where schools are concerned? Not least because all our efforts so far will be wasted if we don’t get our children back to school, allowing life to return to normality and working parents to get back to their jobs. It is fundamental to our recovery. Getting schools running again quickly

has to be a priority. And it will take a truly national endeavour. We need to mobilise everyone with the time, energy and experience to help.

When volunteers were required to help the vulnerable and elderly in isolation, 600,000 people stepped up. We need the Government to galvanise that kind of commitment now, to provide mentoring to pupils who are falling behind, organise summer schools and more.

I believe the voluntary army is ready and waiting. There are thousands of supply teachers who have been unemployed with a severely reduced income since the schools first closed.

Legions of retired and former teachers are available, too, with a lifetime’s experience to offer. I am one of them — I have my teaching qualification and spent eight years as a college lecturer.

There are lots of people like me who could help youngsters catch up before the autumn term begins. We can step in at after- school clubs and be on hand to enable school hours to be staggered.

The former Conservative education secretary Justine Greening has suggested using alternative premises where schools are too small or classrooms too confined to bring children back safely.

Of course there are church halls, empty theatres and other buildings that can be pressed into action — but I believe we can find even more radical solutions.

In New york and other major U.S. cities, I have seen the roads around overcrowded schools being shut for hours at a time to provide play areas. We could do the same and set up marquees or even temporary buildings in the streets.

Why not? No one thought it was possible to build a functioning hospital in weeks, until we saw the Chinese example and copied it. Our Nightingale hospitals appeared almost overnight — the same must be possible with classrooms.

Initiatives need to begin at local level. We must take the best ideas individual schools are already implementing and put them into action across the country — challenge local authorities and education trusts to come up with solutions, then sustain them through national funding put in place by central government.

This is the only way to succeed. The Government cannot impose a uniform policy on the whole country — but it must take the lead.

Fervently

A national push of this sort, in which the whole country is dedicated to helping children return to school, would be very hard for the recalcitrant teachers’ unions to resist. Which only makes the PM’s capitulation all the more unjustifiable.

I honestly believe we can do this, not least because education is so much bigger than party politics. I cited a former Tory minister, Justine Greening, but I’ve heard the same sentiments expressed by my former Labour colleague Alan Johnson, another former education secretary. The children’s commissioner, Anne Longfield, spoke fervently about this yesterday, too.

Here is Kenneth Baker, education secretary under Margaret Thatcher: ‘Disadvantaged students have been particularly hit. Many have not been able to join in the virtual lessons for lack of a laptop or having to share one within their family. More able children have done better and the better- off are more able to afford recovery programmes.’

Independent schools have almost universally provided a full curriculum because of substantially better funding and pupil/teacher ratios than in the state sector. But what is right for the few should surely be the entitlement of the many.

Lord Baker and I have spent much of our political lives disagreeing vehemently with each other, but I subscribe wholeheartedly to his words here. In fact, those sentences are taken from a statement we wrote together and co-signed.

Lifeblood

The next few weeks will shape countless young lives. Children have already been out of school for the length of an average term. A life without school will by now seem normal to many of them.

Teenagers especially are vulnerable to a lack of routine and discipline. They need social contact to bolster their mental health and growth, and need encouragement to help them stay focused. It is natural for teens to feel less comfortable with too much parental guidance, which inevitably makes home schooling difficult.

One practical solution is to reduce the social distancing regulations in line with World Health Organization recommendations. Most of the rest of the world is keeping a healthy distance of one metre apart, and this is the rule we need to adopt.

A two-metre exclusion zone is not just impractical for schools and businesses; scientists agree that the health benefits it brings are negligible.

We already know children are the least susceptible to Covid-19, and we have seen from other countries that students are very unlikely to spread the disease at school, either to teachers or each other.

So sensible social distancing at one metre and constant good hygiene, with plenty of handwashing, could help us get schools working very quickly indeed.

Education is Britain’s lifeblood. No matter what difficulties we face, we owe it to a generation of pupils. If this Government believes in an equal and just society, it should throw everything it has at getting children back to school.