We’d starve if the shops behaved like schools
Supermarkets have taken the initiative, while the education sector has been hamstrung by regulation
Atemperature check on the way in, and another one somewhere between the fish and cheese counter. Staff in full protective gear. Hand sanitisers and wipes on the corner of every aisle, and a system for shipping every packet of crisps off to the lab to make sure the packaging doesn’t have traces of the virus. Oh, and a pay rise for anyone coming into work, along with consultations on targets for gender and racial equality.
If the supermarkets had imposed the same sort of restrictions on staying open through this epidemic as local authorities, Whitehall mandarins and the teaching unions have imposed on schools, we would all have starved by the middle of April.
True, schools are not quite the same as grocery shops. Different rules and standards sometimes apply. And yet in truth, education is every bit as essential as food, and the logistical challenges are no more complex. Teachers and the educational bureaucracy should learn some lessons in flexibility and adaptability from the private sector. At the risk of sounding like an especially platitudinous headmaster on speech day, challenges can be overcome and difficulties surmounted, but only if everyone works together – and there sure isn’t much sign of that in the education system right now.
Anyone who has been to a supermarket in the last month will have noticed how the big chains have adapted to a virus which, while infectious, is not completely deadly. One-way systems have been introduced, along with limits on the numbers of customers in the store at any one time, masks for staff, and cashless payment. It’s not just the supermarkets either. My local farm shop operated a list system: tell them at the door what you wanted, and they packed a box for you.
It is different. And it costs money. But the important point is this. Big chains and local shops alike have adapted and come up with something that works. The shelves are full. We can eat.
The schools are very different. From Monday, primary schools were meant to finally reopen their doors to limited year groups. The aspiration was for all primary school children to be able to spend a month in class before the summer holidays. But so far, things have been chaotic. Some areas have hardly any classes operating at all. In others, teachers are refusing to go back. Anxious parents and still more anxious five-year-olds are confronted with a bewildering set of restrictions that threaten to rip out the soul of what a school should be.
Many of the rules vary between the deranged and the slightly sinister. Do small children really need to be temperature-checked on the way in when there is so little evidence they carry Covid-19? Has whoever came up with the idea they shouldn’t be able to touch each other ever seen a bunch of five-year-old boys in a playground? On what scientific grounds will class sizes be restricted? Is it really too dangerous for teachers to mark homework? Does the library really need to be sanitised, or soft furnishings and toys removed? The list goes on and on.
It would be easy to blame the teaching unions, and they are certainly using the crisis to push for a better deal – which usually means less work for more money – for their members. But the guidance from the Department for Education runs to dozens of pages. To take just one example, schools are instructed to ensure “that toilets do not become too crowded by limiting the number of children or young people who use the toilet facilities at one time”. Local authorities are adding their own restrictions, and the more Left-wing they are, the more obstacles they are finding. No matter how hard individual schools may be striving to make things work, behind the scenes, teams of bureaucrats and union officials are working overtime to make reopening as hard as possible.
The grocery chains, along with the rest of the private sector, have adapted to the crisis, and found a way to keep going. In truth, we over-regulate our schools, in the same way we overregulate every nook and corner of the public sector. With some of the flexibility of the private sector, they could have reopened a lot earlier. Sure, schools would be different, just as supermarkets are different. But they would be open and operating – and that would be a big improvement on the chaos we are seeing right now.