Hapless Swinney’s U-turn is in a class of its own
WHEN is a U-turn not a U-turn? A fortnight ago, the SNP was insisting that the model for schools would be ‘blended learning’ – partly in the classroom and partly at home.
Education Secretary John Swinney was adamant this could last for the whole school year.
For some pupils, this would mean being in the classroom only one day a week, with a bonus second day every third week.
It was a plan that would make it almost impossible for many parents to make it back to work as lockdown restrictions lifted, and would put an intolerable strain on others juggling homeschooling and home-working, without the necessary time or resource to make sure neither their child, nor their employer, missed out.
There was an outcry. These plans sold children and parents short. They lacked ambition and ensured kids across the county would miss out.
Nicola Sturgeon is well able to spot a looming political disaster when she sees one and swiftly threw this plan, her Education Secretary and the commitment to social distancing in classrooms, under a bus.
The hapless Mr Swinney was dispatched to Holyrood to declare that, actually, schools would be back, full-time, in mid-August after all. But it was not a U-turn. Oh no, blended learning had only been a ‘contingency’. Honest.
This fig-leaf covered no modesty and looked even more pitiful when it was delivered on the same day as parents in a number of local authority areas were contacted with their child’s proposed school timetables for the coming term – timetables which showed blended learning of one or two days a week in class.
A tough day at the office for the SNP, but I’m sure a sense of relief that a parents’ revolt had been put down swiftly.
There were possibly even some pats on the back that, by August, no one would remember the chaotic policy reversal because they would be so pleased to get little Johnny or Jemima back to school full-time.
BUT, in meeting the needs of parents, the Government had forgotten about another group in the equation – teachers. Teachers who had put weeks of work into rearranging classrooms for social distancing, planning online lessons and scheduling ‘blended’ rotas had just seen all that work consigned to the bin, with little clarity on what rules they would have to work with after the summer.
And – it turns out – this complete change of policy (which was not a U-turn, remember) had occurred without the consultation or agreement of the Covid Education Recovery Group (CERG), the body set up to decide how best to get pupils back to school.
The leader of Scotland’s largest teaching union, the EIS, branded the decision ‘political’.
General secretary Larry Flanagan wrote an open blog laying down the union’s ‘red lines’. The former militant Labour councillor for Glasgow is a robust voice for his members.
He said: ‘The EIS is not convinced that no physical distancing between pupils is safe and we are absolutely certain that physical distancing between pupils and teachers remains essential.’
When questioned on how the SNP’s U-turn fitted with the red lines of the teacher’s union, Ms
Sturgeon got shirty, saying the ambition was for full-time education from August, but that there was detailed work to do to make that happen – ‘and that work will be done by the Education Recovery Group’. Yes, the same group that wasn’t consulted and didn’t approve the change.
So where does this leave parents and, crucially, pupils?
After first being told that school will be in only one or two days a week, and then being told fulltime classes will commence like before, can parents count on children being taught five days a week in just six weeks’ time?
According to the head of the main teachers’ union, the answer is: ‘Maybes aye, maybes naw.’ Sort it out.