Why those in charge of schools are failing this most vital test
IN these plague-ridden times, you won’t be dropping off the kids at the school-gates and chatting to other parents.
Instead you’ll be taking them to the entrance of the geodome (a large greenhouse), possibly wearing face-masks, before making your way back to the home office.
Your child will then keep their distance from classmates and staff – the regulation two metres.
They may only be in school, or the dome, or perhaps in disused office space, or even in a sports stadium, for a couple of days a week.
Every day brings an ever-more outlandish suggestion for ways to enable social distancing, hence the geodome idea, which sounds like a ‘blue-sky’ proposal from the TV political satire The Thick of It.
This is the dystopian overhaul of state education that awaits when schooling resumes on August 11.
South of the Border, partial reopening got under way yesterday, though surveys suggest half of parents kept their children at home.
If it can happen in England, why are we in Scotland having to wait so much longer, creating extra pressure for the legion of parents trying in vain to keep their children motivated, clustered round kitchen tables?
In Scotland, we’re told early plans to reopen primary schools this month were cancelled because of fears that – in combination with other ‘easements’ of lockdown – the resulting surge in coronavirus would overwhelm the NHS.
Even with hospitals half-empty, as they are just now, the threat was deemed so great that it would be reckless to contemplate unlocking the school-gates (or setting up the geodomes) before the summer break.
Some councils are showing initiative by reopening schools in a limited way: for example, in East Renfrewshire P7 and some nursery pupils will go back on a rota basis from June 15.
Other councils are maintaining a near-monastic silence, perhaps conscious of fuelling tensions with the teaching unions – meaning that information is leaking out on social media, not all of it accurate.
True, it’s a sad prospect for kids to go back to part-time schooling, though anything’s better than the current stalemate which has seen thousands of pupils log out of educational altogether.
Digital truancy, stoked by a dearth of the right hardware – and the government has been slow to distribute it to those most in need – threatens to derail attempts to narrow that infamous attainment gap, once allegedly the SNP’s top priority.
The Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association has called for an army of civilian staff, drawn from the massed ranks of the furloughed and soon-to-be jobless, to oversee pupils’ hand hygiene.
That’s not without its own inherent risks, of course, as it increases the number of potential carriers and victims on school premises.
And yet it seems the two-metre rule itself might be based on pretty questionable science to do with the space between beds in hospital wards decades ago – it’s now under review by the UK Government.
(Schools of the future? Geodomes are proposed to help pupils and staff with social distancing)
Last week Education Secretary John Swinney published a summary of scientific evidence suggesting a serious split in opinion behind the scenes on reopening schools.
A minority of public health experts said no social distancing was needed when schools go back (even in August, under the current plan, the youngest kids won’t have to stay two metres apart).
They were overruled, but wouldn’t it have been worth making public what each of them had said?
The statistics show children who catch Covid-19 tend not to have any symptoms, but also they don’t appear to pass it on very easily.
Less than one per cent of positive cases of the virus are accounted for by people aged under 15, while there have been no coronavirus deaths for under-15s in Scotland.
Well, scientists disagree as much as experts in any other profession – though there is rather a lot riding on these decisions.
The disruption to education caused by social distancing and part-time lessons shouldn’t be underestimated, not to mention the impact on children’s mental health.
It’s right that the safety of pupils and staff should be prioritised, but if government gets this wrong (and it hasn’t been infallible so far), irrevocable damage could be done to classroom (or geodome?) standards.
Home learning has been a contradiction in terms, with many parents long ago giving up hope of meaningful support from government or its assorted quangos.
It’s taken too long for ministers to provide cash for IT kit for the most deprived children.
But there are countless logistical problems and childcare dilemmas if kids are only going to school for a couple of days a week – and practice will probably vary widely between local authorities.
On the days when the child is learning from home, or supposed to be, mum or dad, who may or may not be working from home, will have to supervise.
There’s a huge mindset and institutional change required, so much so that the EIS teaching union, not famed for its adaptability, has warned the hybrid system of blended learning presents ‘potentially the biggest curriculum challenge of this century’.
There’s even a question-mark over whether exams next year will go ahead – this year’s were called off.
Planning for the 2021 diet is going on, but Mr Swinney sounded a note of caution last week when he said teachers would keep gathering evidence of individual pupils’ performance as no-one can know at this stage whether the exams will proceed in full.
Union bosses back the idea of putting more trust in teachers’ professional judgment and they’re right to point out that it won’t be a normal academic year, so traditional exams may be an unfair method of assessment.
Maybe, but it’s worrying that such a radical proposal, a departure from formal examination, enjoys quite so much official approval.
It’s theoretically possible to dispense with exams as long as there’s rigorous external inspection – but that didn’t always happen in the pre-virus era.
All of which might lead you to ask whether what’s planned for our schools will set them back even further, at a time when too many were under-performing after more than a decade of mismanagement by the SNP.
We’ll need to be at the top of our game educationally as we emerge from this nightmarish ordeal and try to rebuild the economy.
Blended learning could work and brings with it the bonus of smaller class sizes – which have long been a demand of the unions.
But are ministers and local authority bosses, after a long period of failing to meet the challenges of lockdown education, really up to the task of managing this tricky transition?
Keeping the virus under control is a priority – as Nicola Sturgeon warned yesterday, it is always waiting to pounce – and it necessitates big alterations to old routines that will be deeply unpopular.
But it remains to be seen whether the plan for re-starting schools is remotely credible, and how long it can be sustained.
We have to safeguard the NHS – but it can’t come at the price of undermining an education system that was already foundering.
*This column appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail on June 2, 2020.
