Schools must adopt week-on, week-off system, says teachers’ union

In the face of a cynical new threat to close schools, we need an army of volunteers to help our children

SCHOOLS must only open on a “weekon, week-off ” basis after lockdown, the country’s biggest teachers’ union has demanded.

Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union has said that rotas should stay in place at secondary schools and sixth form colleges for “as long as necessary”. The union has already called for schools to close during lockdown, a demand which was echoed yesterday by the Greater Manchester mayor.

Andy Burnham said that schools should close so that the “full benefits” of a national lockdown can be felt.

“If we’re going to do this, let’s do it properly and get cases right down before January – traditionally the most difficult month [for] the NHS,” he told Sky News. “Let’s get the full benefits of a national lockdown. Of course it’s difficult closing schools, but I think schools will be less disrupted if we get this real circuit break. To be honest, it’s not a proper circuit break unless we really do close everything.”

The NEU said that given the growth in cases among secondary school-aged children, rotas should be introduced following the lockdown whereby students are taught at home part of the time.

The union’s analysis of the latest data from the Office of National Statistics showed that Covid-19 rates among secondary school pupils are some of the highest in the country.

“The rota system would run for as long as necessary, certainly until we have a fit-for-purpose test, trace and isolate system,” Mr Courtney said.

“The need for rotas will lessen when safety measures are significantly improved, and when the R rate has reduced to below one.”

Public Health England said that the “most likely” place children will get infected with Covid-19 is in their homes. Asked if the transmission risk in schools was high, Dr Susan Hopkins, deputy director of PHE, told Times Radio Breakfast: “We don’t know exactly.

We do know that the majority of children have infection that’s related to infection in their households, which is clearly the most likely place that children will get infected.” She added: “We have also agreed that we want our children to be in education, that we think that the damage done from a year of children’s education lost is too high for us to accept as a society.”

Downing Street said that millions of “cheap, reliable and rapid turnaround tests” will be rolled out in schools across the country. “What we know from trialling them in schools as well as hospitals is that we can use the tests not just to locate people who have the virus but also to drive down the disease,” the Prime Minister’s spokesman said.

On Sunday, the National Education Union unveiled a new hashtag: #Closetheschools. It has since been modified to the clunkier #putschoolsinthelockdown, but the irony remains. This is the largest teaching union in the land calling for what amounts to the long-term annulment of schooling as we know it. It’s turkeys voting for Christmas, and would be funny were it so manifestly not.

What the NEU is proposing is staggering. Not content with merely shuttering the schools during this new lockdown (one whose length is unknown but which already seems unlikely to be “just” the promised four weeks), the union has gone further by proposing a rota system be introduced at the end of the lockdown period, involving alternating week-on, week-off school closures, with half class sizes. It has done so in full knowledge of the harm that school closures cause: a plethora of evidence has made clear that shutting schools in March delivered a hammer blow to the mental, physical and educational prospects of millions of children.

A rota system would be equally catastrophic. Quite aside from the havoc such a system would wreak on working parents, remote learning is simply no substitute for classroom teaching even if all children could access it. Adults, let alone children, are Zoom-weary and children disengage without peers and a teacher who can focus on encouraging and nurturing learning. As one student on the Usforthem Twitter feed puts it: “Last lockdown I failed everything because I wasn’t able to get the proper support that I normally get when I’m in college. We need to stay in education otherwise it will massively impact our courses and our future. That isn’t fair.”

Children and young people comprise only a tiny proportion of cases of coronavirus worldwide and the vast majority of reported infections in children are mild or asymptomatic.

Meanwhile, study after study indicates that transmission from children to teachers is exceptionally rare. In contrast, further school closures and the introduction of a rota system would take a scythe to the prospects of our most vulnerable pupils.

Union leaders must not be allowed to push through these politicallymotivated demands. As well as being catastrophic to children, they’re an embarrassment to the great number of teachers who remain fully committed to teaching. “I’m fed up with the bad image the unions give my profession,” reads just one of many messages we’ve received in the last few days. And you can see why anyone associated would want to distance themselves: this is a despicable manoeuvre by a union willing to play politics with children’s life prospects and well-being. Not even all of the teaching unions can bring themselves to support the calls. The National Association of Head Teachers has stated that “it is right to prioritise keeping pupils in schools”.

It is also questionable whether the NEU has followed a lawful process: we understand that no ballot has been put to teachers. Unions who breach their own processes are not beyond the scope of legal review. If the NEU is really so confident that its members want to see school closures and are comfortable with the carnage that will cause to a generation of children, they must put it to a vote. Dr Mary Bousted, it’s time for you to put up or shut up.

In the meantime, parents and all the committed teachers out there must hope for the best but plan for the worst. What the NEU has proposed leaves families horribly exposed. We now need a national initiative to ensure continuity of in-school education for our children.

Today, under the hashtag #Parentarmy, we’re launching a volunteer army of grandparents and parents, DBS checked, ready and willing to step in if the unions find ways to withdraw their support for schools. We know we can’t replace teachers, but we can help them do the jobs that so many of them simply want to get on with doing.

Shutting schools for a second time would be the greatest act of educational self-harm in our history. The damage wrought would take decades to recover from and for many thousands of children there would be no recovery. We must not – will not – let it happen.