Our school system is failing its youngsters

Guidance needs to be rewritten urgently so that children don’t suffer more in the fallout from Covid

According to the latest Department for Education (DFE) figures, some 800,000 children remain out of school, three weeks into the academic year. That’s more than 10 per cent of the state school population and more than double the overall absence rate for the whole of the previous academic year. Something has gone badly wrong. That no minister seems to have regarded this as a matter deserving urgent action suggests it is a compound failure.

The Prime Minister declared the task of getting children back to school “a moral duty” and a “national priority”. Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, has said: “The fact so many schools are open… crucially, means children and young people can continue their education with minimal disruption.”

“Minimal disruption”? The parents of the many thousands of children already sent home this term to isolate because a single classmate tested positive for Covid, let alone those who’ve endured more than one period of enforced self-isolation, would be justified in being more than a little sceptical.

Beyond the Education Secretary’s rosy rhetoric, worrying trends suggest a bleaker reality: a sharp rise in homeschooling reported last week by Ofsted in a study of 130 schools. The DFE have moved to make it unlawful for schools not to provide remote learning during periods of self-isolation and local lockdown, egged on, inevitably, by certain union leaders. Huge numbers of parents, mostly mothers, are now leaving the workforce, defeated by the practicalities of juggling homeschooling and working life.

The majority of schools are open, but few look like the version that children left behind in March. Reports flooding into Usforthem suggest a panoply of welfare issues, some of them distressingly serious. Children with restricted access to loos and to water refills to the extent that they wet themselves or faint; children made to spend days in isolation because of mask exemptions. Draconian restrictions on play and friendship groups. Face coverings, even on the youngest pupils (and, in many cases, teaching staff). Draughty classrooms left open to the elements. Cold school meals. Too many rules. All overlaid by a pall of fear: “Don’t kill Granny.”

Both the chief inspector of schools, Amanda Spielman, and union bosses have been quick to attribute the rise in home learning to parents’ ongoing concerns about the threat of the virus. However, based on the reports we are receiving, parents are far more concerned about the negative effects of an alien school environment. Many are parents of the most vulnerable children; those with disabilities or special educational needs.

It’s not hard to discern what might have gone wrong: DFE guidance which amounts to a complete overhaul of the operating system for schools has been devised, without input from parents or any group championing the welfare of children; and without an effective system, or indeed any system, for monitoring the implementation of this new operating model.

The other day we received this email from a parent at harsh draconian measures introduced at a primary school: “I am a very strong single mum,” she wrote, “and I can cope with pretty much anything life throws… but receiving this information from the school has utterly broken my spirit.”

This sums up the predicament of so many parents: too powerless or exhausted to fight back at the best of times – now further hobbled by the defective schooling system we should now be rallying against. But rally parents must, because it is only once we find a collective voice that can we hope for the plight of children to improve.

The Government therefore must rewrite the schools guidance, this time in consultation with those who have children’s welfare most at heart. If this doesn’t happen, and soon, we should use all lawful means, including our courts if necessary, to declare that this is not OK.

These are our youngsters, and ministers would do well to remember the words of Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, by which the UK is bound: “In all actions concerning children… the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.”