England’s schools are a thoroughly modern mess

Yes, these are exceptional times, but should schools have been so far down the pecking order for central attention compared with ‘non-essential’ shops, asks Mary Dejevsky

The issue of reviving education has been a thorny one for the government (iStock)

A few weeks ago, I singled out some areas where it seemed that, amid all the inadequacies exposed by the coronavirus pandemic, the government had got things right. One was the efficiency with which the benefits and subsidy schemes had worked. Another was the decision to keep schools open for children of key workers and others in need. It was hardly the government’s fault that so relatively few had taken up the offer.

Nor is it fair to argue, as some have, that the government should have kept all schools open. Many parents were already keeping their children at home well before the official closure and, so long as the daily infection and death tolls mounted, they were not going to send them back. There was considerably more doubt then than there is now about the risk of the virus to children.

Twelve weeks on, however, unlocking is proving a lot harder than locking, in education as elsewhere – even though children are now judged more at risk from a lightning strike than from Covid-19. What is more, the pandemic has started to shine as pitiless a light on our education system as it has done on the inadequacies of health and social care.

Why is it so difficult to get children in England – and my comments relate only to England, as education is devolved – back to school when their contemporaries in many European countries quietly returned when their governments told them to? And why are such dire forecasts being made about the future of nurseries at one end of the scale and some universities at the other? Weren’t we supposed to have a “world-beating” system of education?

Let’s start with pre-school and move up the age range. The weakness of nurseries is similar in many ways to that of the care sector. Private and state provision jostle for custom; fees are extortionate compared with those charged in most of Europe, yet many barely make ends meet and hours often fail to match the hours parents work. Now, many private nurseries warn that they may not be able to reopen. Individual nurseries may be excellent, but the system, such as it is, is over-complicated, inconsistent and inefficient. It needs a total re-think. Does the government want parents to work or not?

I understand the difficulties faced by schools that are doing their best to reorganise their activities with two-metre social-distancing, deep-clean their accommodation between sessions and cope with the absence of teachers whose own children are not in the age groups set to return. But my goodness, what a mess, what a lack of creative thinking, what a lack of political will.

Teachers’ unions received a roasting from Conservatives on the Commons Education Select Committee this week, and rightly so – they have been obstructing the reopening of schools from the time the prospect was first mooted. Of course, they have to protect their members, but experience elsewhere has shown that teacher-teacher infection is far more of a risk than anything to do with the children. In that case, just shutting the staff-room and enforcing social-distancing should do the trick.

It is not unreasonable to ask, as MPs did, why teenagers can flock to Primark but cannot return to school. The same risks from transport and contact surely apply. Lord Blunkett, hardly a foe of trade unions, has made a host of sensible suggestions – from co-opting retired teachers and requisitioning public buildings, to outdoor lessons and shift systems. Why has the same urgency that was directed towards the all-hands-on-deck transformation of the NHS not been applied to getting children back to school?

The cost of not doing so – as argued by educationists, the children’s commissioner, and today by 1,500 paediatricians – will come back to haunt us. There may not be a whole “lost” generation, but it is those who are already disadvantaged who are losing the most: not just those with no laptop or internet, but those whose parents and teachers have treated uninterrupted schooling as less of a priority than others.

And here the fault lies not only, or even mainly, with those unions and their members who eye a chance to obstruct a Conservative and Brexit government. It is a system failure from top to bottom. Where were the clear instructions to teachers about what they should do during lockdown? What type, level or length of engagement were they supposed to have with pupils every week, say? Why wasn’t the BBC told to put its admirable education programmes on a terrestrial channel, rather than the internet, during the day?

Could the long summer holiday not have been brought forward, with the “summer” term delayed for everyone until July and the new school year starting a couple of weeks later? Why does the government tolerate a situation where only a tiny proportion of children, even in the designated year groups, are now back in the classroom every day?

Yes, these are exceptional times. But should schools have been so far down the pecking order for central attention compared with “non-essential” shops? In many ways, the problem is similar to that with nurseries: a fragmented system that is barely a system, even though it is supposed to provide a high-standard education for all.

In terms of continuing lessons and pastoral care, the disparity between most private and most state schools seems to have been stark (and it is not just a matter of funding). There have been wide disparities within the state sector, too. With religious schools, free schools, academies and state schools all answering to different authorities, is it any wonder something as ostensibly simple as a post-pandemic return to school proves so contested and complicated in practice?

The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, could have been a lot more prominent than he was (and his eleventh-hour retreat on school reopening reflects a massive failure of government). But where were the senior civil servants at the Department for Education, and the regulator, Ofsted? Aside from Lord Blunkett, the only individual I can recall advocating regularly for the interests of school pupils was the children’s commissioner, Anne Longfield.

Many of the same ills afflict higher education, too. What was once a robust system, academically and financially, has gradually degenerated into something a lot less sound. Universities have been encouraged, to do their own thing – raise credit, expand, build whatever they want to build – until suddenly it all risks collapse, because the high-paying foreign students on whom this whole model now relies could stop coming. Many universities, I know, have made heroic efforts in recent weeks to transfer their tuition online. But a virtual university education is not what either home or foreign students will be prepared to pay for.

Of course, no one could have foreseen a global pandemic and its effects. But the English “model” of education, such as it is, is now starting to look more vulnerable than most. Yes, many teachers, especially headteachers, have gone “above and beyond”; and bravo to all the parents suddenly plunged into home-schooling. But the system as a whole has been exposed for the ill-assorted and often unfair edifice that it is.

What was regarded by many in recent years as a strength – choice, diverse models, a plethora of administrative and funding regimes – now stands exposed as a weakness. There is too little effective regulation, too much say for unions, too little consistency in standards, too little of the State, and too few solid institutional supports capable of sustaining the system in extreme times.

What has allowed children in France, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands to return to their desks is the solidity of their educational institutions, agreement about the purpose of schooling and clarity about who is in charge. The decline of such basics here is why most of their contemporaries in England are still languishing at home.