Gavin Williamson must end the Covid chaos in the classroom

The Department for Education has had a challenging pandemic. In March 2020 school closures caught the DfE completely off guard, as the national pandemic plan had assumed they would stay open. A summer exam fiasco was followed by a second wave which they were, again, unprepared for, with schools opening for a single day in January before sense prevailed. As a result, a second exam season has now descended into chaos. The department has struggled to procure laptops for lower income children and their chosen food voucher provider, Edenred, oversaw an epic IT system car crash. A belligerent determination to push blame on to Unions and school staff, and endless last minutes changes to rules and guidance, has led to a profound breakdown in their relationship with the profession.

Government schools policy has been hindered by optimism bias and a lack of clarity

Through all these crises a common theme has been severe optimism bias. This was most apparent in the bizarre refusal to contingency plan for the second wave despite pleas to do so from across the sector. And we’ve seen it again over the last few months as the Delta variant has led to another spike in cases, particularly amongst secondary school pupils. It’s hard to believe, after 16 months of covid, that there is still a failure to understand the nature of exponential growth, but no actions have been taken either to help schools keep cases low or to mitigate the impact of those cases. The inevitable consequence is that almost 400,000 pupils are now missing school due to the requirement that close contacts of positive cases self-isolate.

A second common theme has been a lack of clarity as to the government’s objectives. If its aim is to reduce case numbers to as low as possible then why were secondary schools told to stop using masks just as infections started rising again? Why has this guidance not been reversed now there are far more cases than when it was lifted? Equally, why has there been no serious attempt to help schools improve their ventilation by, for instance, funding air filtration units in classrooms? And why are there no plans, as yet, to vaccinate teenagers, despite apparently successful efforts to do so in the US and Israel (and overwhelming parental support)?

If the government’s view is that this is unnecessary, and we would be better off allowing natural herd immunity to form amongst younger people, given the very low risk of serious illness in that age group, then why are we asking pupils to isolate at all? If that was the objective then we would actively want pupils with asymptomatic or mild illness to be circulating amongst their peers.

The government must vaccinate secondary age pupils or accept their natural herd immunity

There are arguments in favour of both of these approaches, that I am not qualified to judge. There is not agreement amongst the members of the Joint Centre for Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) as to the balance of risks. And no doubt whichever direction the government chose they would be attacked by one side in what has become a frustratingly polarised debate. But we have seen throughout this pandemic that avoiding a decision, and trying to ride two horses, usually ends badly. Right now we have the worst of both worlds, with the infection spreading rapidly in secondaries anyway, but isolation policies forcing hundreds of thousands of healthy pupils out of school.

This week’s statement from education secretary Gavin Williamson has only added to the confusion. He indicated he was unhappy with the numbers isolating but didn’t say when any changes might come into force or what they might be. With only three more weeks of term left, it looks unlikely we’ll have much clarity before the summer holidays.

It is essential that a decision is made, one way or another, well before the start of the Autumn term. Especially given that the planned ending of remaining restrictions on the 19th July could well lead to a further spike in cases, despite the ongoing vaccination programme. If the government wants to continue to try and hold cases in check in schools then it must offer vaccinations to all secondary age pupils over the summer holidays so as to avoid any further disruption to their already heavily disrupted education. If this doesn’t happen the only alternative is to end isolation policies and to accept natural herd immunity in this age group. We cannot allow chaos and confusion to ruin yet another school year.