Thread by @lewis_goodall

Spent the day talking to teachers

talk about teachers not being flexible enough misses the point. Problem in getting schools back isn't teacher flexibility- it's a lack of confidence from parents in sending kids back and partly a lack of strategy from govt in how it's to be done

There is little doubt, on any side, that continued school closure is a catastrophe

This is the first time since the 1870s that there has been no compulsory schooling

Since its introduction, it has reliably been the best tool we have in advancing social justice/safeguarding kids

For this reason, govt has been very keen to ensure that vulnerable kids can go to school

They anticipated (alongside key workers' kids) that 20% would go

Demand hasn't met supply

In many places attendance has been as low as 1-2%

Even as schools have reopened for R, Y1, Y2- demand hasn't been high

Though the Education Sec said in his statement today that takeup has been 60-70%, as he carefully said, this is in schools which have replied to questionnaires

Many haven't done so

In many schools, attendance is much, much lower

Attendance is sometimes lowest in more deprived/BAME areas

In BAME case, the reasons are obvious given Covid stats

But as one head told me today, her most deprived and BAME parents seem most suspicious about govt advice

In Wandsworth, more leafy places in the borough have higher attendance and a desire from parents for more to come back. In more deprived areas, which are poorer and more BAME, demand in some places is less. Covid more likely to affect them, more multi generational homes etc

As long as lack of compulsion is there then, it might turn out that more middle class kids more likely to go back and poorer kids more likely to be off

So you could have double whammy of poor kids suffering from being off school AND more middle class contemporaries being there

So long as lack of compulsion exists you could end up with all sorts of undesirable outcomes

So we're going to have to find a way of getting all kids back. Right now there's no real strategy in England for how that'll happen

Sarah Collymore, head of St George's Battersea: "I’m hoping that in Sept we’ll be able to open more widely, but in order to do that we’ll need a national strategy because to keep social distancing...we'll need serious work between now and September to be open"

So truth is we probably have two options

EITHER

we abandon social distancing in schools- and try and assure parents there is little risk (always going to be harder in multi generational households)

or we need a massive effort to open schools by September

That would required two big things

a HUGE teacher recruitment drive. If you want socially distant schools every school is going to need to recruit massively. But there aren't enough teachers. There are though, lots of unemployed people and Teach First does it in 3 months

You could train lots more, perhaps bring former teachers back to the progression and try and encourage retention. But you need a huge effort and you need to start right now

Likewise, with school buildings. Denmark has requisitioned all sorts of public buildings, theatres, cultural venues and the like. We could do the same. But you'd need huge capital investment to get them up to scratch AND recruitment