MP says schools can’t return to “business as usual”

TEACHERS, support staff and a massive range of administrative workers and community volunteers are rallying round across Tower Hamlets to support children who are not able to go into school during the current Lockdown.

Support offered to Tower Hamlets school pupils during Lockdown begins with the very basics: do the children and young people have enough food to eat? It continues with the curriculum, with teachers offering all manner of support for children who are learning at home. Many schools are sending tailored learning packs out to children which they have also posted on their websites – with teachers offering children support over the phone.

During a normal term time, school staff work flat out to safeguard children and give extra support to those with special needs – and none of that work has stopped during the lockdown. Schools are closed to most of their pupils, but most staff are working harder than ever – unsung heroes keeping the education system going.

The Education Policy Institute sees itself as a data-driven think tank which devises education policy to deliver an equitable, quality education system. It has responded to the education deficit caused by the Lockdown with a new research paper. The paper warns that the interruption to their education is likely to make children from poorer backgrounds suffer increasing disadvantage. It makes some recommendations about how the gap in achievement could be narrowed.

Some of the ideas are quite sensible, such as:
•increasing pupil premium funding (and some similar funding streams) for one year;
•bringing more volunteers, such as retired teachers, to help out in schools;
•suspending all Ofsted inspections until January 2021 at the earliest.
Whether anyone will listen is not clear.

However, at least Poplar & Limehouse MP Apsana Begum, who is a member of the House of Commons Select Committee on Education, has read the Report.  She is concerned that children living in poverty – as one third of children in Tower Hamlets do, the highest percentage in Great Britain – may find that they are getting behind with the curriculum because of their home circumstances.

Ms Begum commented on the Report, saying, “It can’t be business as usual in terms of curriculum and qualifications – both now and after the lockdown.
“Teachers are reporting a growing pressure on them and their students to get through the curriculum and this will put some young people at a distinct disadvantage.
“We have to be aware of the restrictions facing children and families with limited IT and access to broadband or who may be struggling with food poverty and dealing with bereavements.
“In overcrowded households, there are children without access to a basic chair and table and, where there are devices, they are shared with multiple members of the household.
“No child should be held back by unfair expectations and pressures.
“Most fundamentally, schools should not open unless it is safe for them to do so and the wellbeing of our children must be paramount.”

Local teachers are likely to agree with their MP that re-opening schools safely will not be easy – even as they work their socks off to mitigate the disadvantage that Ms Begum has mentioned.

●Read more about it:
Leaked school document warns of bleak future under Tories
Corona & class: Part 1 – how a virus divided society