It’ll take time to get schools on right path

It could take up to three years to get education back on track in Sunderland, following the pandemic, city education chiefs have warned.

Pupils are due to begin rejoining classrooms from Monday, March 8, although bosses have admitted that in some cases it might take until Friday, depending on testing and social distancing requirements.

But understanding and reacting to the impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak is expected to be a much longer process, with the youngest pupils expected to be most in need of extra attention.

“This is not a six-week recovery process, we’re not going to improve and get back to where we were over a short period,” said Simon Marshall, director of education at Together for Children, the organisation which runs children’s services in Sunderland.

“This is probably going to be two or three years of really hard, complicated work, understanding what the impact of the pandemic has been on children.

“We need to listen to children, we need to design programmes that best meet their needs.

“Some of it’s still unknown around what the impact’s going to be – it’s not just switching maths and English back on.”

Marshall was speaking at a meeting of Sunderland City Council’s Children, Education and Skills Scrutiny Committee on March 4, which was held by videolink and broadcast via YouTube.

All of Sunderland’s primary schools are expected to open on Monday, with all the city’s secondary schools predicted to be “fully open” by March 10.