Tag Archives: COVID-19

Thank a Teacher or perhaps not?

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When is a holiday for teachers not a holiday? Perhaps when announced by a government Minister. In my book, an in-service day is not a holiday. The Schools Minister’s announcement of an extra day before Christmas to allow teachers to have a “proper break” from working with test and trace to identify Covid cases doesn’t seem like a real holiday to me. More of a political announcement where a Minister hopes that nobody will read beyond the headline.

Apparently Mr Gibb told the Education Select Committee earlier this week that: “We are about to announce that ‘inset days’ can be used on Friday December 18, even if an inset day had not been originally scheduled for that day.

“We want there to be a clear six days so that, by the time we reach Christmas Eve, staff can have a proper break without having to engage in the track and trace issues.”

How seriously will school leaders take the additional opportunity for in-service training? Hopefully, they will suggest training at home rather than requiring attendance at the school site. Of course, some supply teachers stand to lose a possible day’s pay as a result of this announcement.  

With the looming pay freeze for next year facing teachers, I wonder how teachers will receive this badly wrapped present. A pay freeze may send some teachers overseas next year and others looking for promotion, so ‘churn’ may increase next year. At TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk we also expect more leadership vacancies than in recent years, especially in the primary sector, as leaders decide they have had enough of muddle and mixed messages about the handling of the pandemic.

The National Education Union has published a useful set of maps showing how covid-19 cases have ebbed and flowed for primary age pupils and the 10-14 age-group during the course of the autumn term between September to the first week in December. It is not clear what moves the government has taken to ensure vulnerable staff are properly protected. Looking back over this blog, I notice I made a suggestion about identifying possible staff ‘at risk’ and ensuring that they weren’t in contact with pupils. Figures for the cost of supply staff suggests that this wasn’t taken up as an idea.

Certainly my idea of employing NQTs without a teaching post as supernumerary staff wasn’t acted upon. I wonder whether this would have been a cheaper option than boosting the profits of the supply agencies.

Finally, I was struck by this paragraph from the report of an Ofsted virtual visit to a secondary school in early November

Teachers have checked what pupils remember and used this knowledge to help them plan lessons. Overall, they have found that the areas pupils needed help with before lockdown are even more of a priority now. For example, pupils who previously found reading tricky now need extra help. You are using some of the COVID-19 catch-up premium to address this by employing extra staff and purchasing additional resources.

Recovering the damage done by covid-19 to children’s education is going to be a key task for 2021 and beyond.

Not the party we expected

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Follow this link to an article I have written for the Church Times on schools and the pandemic. It was written in early September.

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2020/25-september/features/features/education-150-years-of-state-schools-not-the-party-we-expected

A Failure of Leadership?

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Christmas 2019 must have been a wonderful time in the Prime Minister’s household. A stunning election win just weeks before; a new family member on the way and our exit from Europe assured.

How different, it must seem now. On March 20th, as schools were locked down, I wrote on this blog:

How a Prime minister deals with a crisis sometimes seals their fate. Chamberlain did not survive the switch from phony war to Blitzkrieg, and Eden paid for the shambles of Suez with his job. How our current Prime Minister handles the next few weeks will seal his fate.  I never thought I would be writing these lines, especially in a situation where the current government has such a large majority. But even a large majority cannot protect someone in Number 10 Downing Street if both the opposition and significant parts of his own Party want a change of leadership.

We haven’t reached that state yet. But, just looking at how the government has handled the school situation in England this week leaves me wondering, as a political opponent, how much more his own Party will take? Why was the list of key workers not available on Wednesday? COVID-19 PM’s Suez? Posted on March 20, 2020

Since then we have had the PPE crisis; the care homes testing fiasco along with the test and trace debacle. Admittedly, there was firm leadership over self-isolation requirements for travellers from Spain, France, the Netherlands and some other countries. But, even that leadership has too often turned into a communications disaster.

Now we have the Prime Minister seemingly abandoning his own Education Secretary to his fate. Leadership means either sacking him or backing him, not disappearing from sight. It is not for me to suggest a way out, but here is what I would do now:

Honour predicted GCSE Grades 

In this exceptional year, employers, colleges and schools should honour all teacher predicted grades for this year’s cohort of GCSE Students. Oxfordshire County Council Liberal Democrat Group believes such an approach provides clear leadership. Examinations at 16 are no longer an exit point from learning for the overwhelming majority of our students, and they should not be penalised by decisions taken in the interest of smoothing out a time series of achievement.  

Students starting in September will need support whatever the grades they were predicted to achieve, and using teacher grades to determine futures is the fairest method possible. 

In the longer-term, Liberal Democrats want an assessment of the cost and effectiveness of retaining public examinations at sixteen over more local forms of less expensive assessment. 

Finally, we acknowledge the hard work of teachers, parents and many others in supporting our young people and adult learners during this challenging period in our history. 

It is up to Tories what they do about the government, but the people will speak when elections return in 2021. A Prime minister that understands the history of this nation will know the portents.

Happy Birthday

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Today is the 150th birthday of the 1870 Education Act. This was the Act of Parliament that established State Schools in England for the first time. There had been funding for schools before this date, but 1870 marked the start of a State education system.

However, there was no requirement in the Act to send children to school, and there still isn’t. Parents must educate their offspring, but it is up to them how to do it. If they make no provision, then the state school system is the default catch-all option: parents cannot simply ignore the issue of education once a child reaches statutory school age.

It is perhaps symbolic that the Prime Minister has chosen today, probalby unknowingly, .to talk of the new term and a ‘moral duty’ to get all children back to school.

As I said in an earlier post, I worry not for the children, but for those they come into contact with both at home and at school. High risk teachers should be deployed working with high risk and self-isolating children that cannot attend school by using the developing technology to offer appropriate learning strategies available to all.

Much also needs to be achieved with those that have fallen behind over the past five months so that they can catch-up without just facing a diet of just English and mathematics.

Cash strapped local authorities need to consider retaining uniform grants for those pupils attending schools requiring special clothes whose parents are unable to afford the cost of this specialist clothing. Schools should also make uniform optional, and not mandatory, in the present climate, and certainly not use it as a means of discrimination against certain pupils.

The government must also not forget further education and apprenticeships. Those with long memories will recall the TVEI scheme of the 1980s. Perhaps it is time to create a 20th century version, so that no young person leaves education without some offer of continued education or employment.

Local authorities should investigate how much cash they have taken from maintained primary schools through the Apprenticeship Levy that is currently sitting in bank accounts and set up task forces to ensure it can reduce youth unemployment locally. There is no point in giving the cash back to government. The same is true for the MATs.

MATs, diocese and local authorities should also review the level of school balances. Now is the time to spend them and not to leave them in the bank doing nothing. It is just a rainy day, but a monsoon of unimaginable proportions. If head teacher need convincing, then offer suggestions for how the cash can be spent.

Finally, I have suggested before that the class of 2020 that graduated as teachers all be offered work in view of the steep decline in vacancies that has led to many not being employed for September.

Let us celebrate this special day in the history of education in England by working to provide the children of today with the best possible education in these unprecedented times.

Covid-19 and schools: not risk free

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Re-opening schools to all pupils during the continued covid-19 outbreak poses at least three possible threats:

To the pupils themselves

To the staff both working in schools and also transporting children to and from school

To family members of these two groups.

So, what do we know about deaths from covid-19. The NHS weekly data on the deaths of patients who have died in hospitals in England and have tested positive for Covid-19 are shown in the table below. All deaths were reported during the period up to the 15th July 2020.

Age group  Pre-existing condition: YesPre-existing condition: NoUnknown presence of pre-existing conditionTotal
      
0 – 19 years 164020
20 – 39 177330210
40 – 59 1,99326502,258
60 – 79 10,499569011,068
80+ 15,082508015,590
Unknown age 0000

Source england.covid19dailydeaths@nhs.net

 Because it isn’t clear when covid-19 really started affecting the population, it is also worth looking at the ONS data for all registered deaths in 2020. Those in the 5-19 age groupings amount to 606 from all causes. This compares with more than 11,000 in the 55-59 age grouping and more than 15,000 in the 60-64 age grouping. Data is up to 3rd July 2020. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales

School pupils may well catch covid-19 and transmit it, but it seems not to be fatal for school-age pupils in any numbers, even though every death is a tragedy for the family.

The ONS also report on testing in the community that excludes care homes, hospitals and other institutional settings. The commented that ‘Statistical testing also indicates that there is not enough evidence to say with confidence that community infection rates over the study period differ between age groups. However, when analysing the different infection rates by age, it is important to recognise that community settings do not include people in institutional settings, such as care homes.’ https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19infectionsinthecommunityinengland/july2020

However, the unweighted data does show lower percentages of young people testing positive for covid-19, but there are wide confidence intervals in the data. More age related testing is needed.

The threat is obviously greater to adults that come into contact with both children and other adults in school settings or by transporting pupils to and from schools.

Looking at the wider data, there are obviously some groups at higher risk than others, and school staff in these groups, whether teachers or support staff may need better shielding from possible infection. Perhaps the highest risk groups should not have contact with large groups of children until a vaccine is in place?

As I have said before, the system should be ‘hoping for the best, but planning for the worst’. It seems as if local lockdowns are almost inevitable through at least part of the next school-year, and planning to cope with such occurrences should be high on the agenda of officials.

For this reason, I have previously advocated a supernumerary scheme for NQTs without a teaching post for September. I still think such a move would be sensible.

Support school leaders

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One of the more interesting aspects of the labour market in education at this time is the number of head teacher vacancies on offer. A quick search on the DfE’s web site revealed that 15% of the 168 vacancies listed today were for head teachers. To verify that number, it is necessary to remove all non-teaching posts – of which there are still quite a few- and separate out the genuine head teacher vacancies from other leadership posts that include not only other senior leadership posts, at deputy and assistant head teacher level, but also head of department vacancies.

This number of head teacher vacancies in late July is not exceptional, but normally one would have expected schools to have made arrangements for leadership during the next school-year that all too soon will be upon us.

However, recognising the huge strain that has been placed upon head teachers since the start of the covid-19 pandemic, and the universal lockdown of society, it would not be surprising if some head teachers were now starting to think of their future.

It is essential that head teachers, and indeed all staff in schools, can take a genuine break over the next six to seven weeks. The long autumn term is always a strain for everyone, even after a normal summer break. To start September not fully refreshed is to risk an education system that will just not function properly.

My concern about staffing in the autumn, following the collapse in vacancies since March, has led me to call for a scheme to provide support for newly qualified teachers unable to secure a teaching job. These new teachers are a resource we cannot afford to squander.

We have seen them invest in their training through the student loan programme. They entered into training as teachers in good faith. In some case making the decision to train as a teacher in the autumn of 2018, when applications opened. Dumping these individuals on the growing pile of the unemployed, while the interest payments on their student loans continues to mount up, is not fair.

As I have said in the past, we don’t treat trainee members of the armed forces or many other public services, including new recruits to the civil service, in this way.

If we lose even 20% of this year’s class of new teachers from the profession that will have a profound effect on middle and senior leadership recruitment in the years to come.

Should we see a surge in departures of head teachers, either in the autumn or more likely next January, then we do need to have the candidates in the system to step up and fill the roles that underpin the supply of new head teachers.

We might also start by looking at how many Executive Head Teachers there are overseeing MATs, and whether there is room for rationalisation, and some cost saving as a result.

This has been a challenging year for school leaders, and those responsible for policy must ensure that one of the consequences of covid-19 is not a breakdown in the leadership of any of our schools.

Coherent planning needed: not directives

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Earlier this week, I offered this action plan for providing education for all in Oxfordshire by September, in some way or another. Such a position needs to be the objective. It would need cooperation from all groups coordinated by Schools Forum and the Local Authority. Like NHS and the economy, it will need extra funds

The aim to ensure teaching and learning is available to all 5-18 year olds in the county by September will be a challenge, but one we should embrace..

Creating learning for all needs strategic planning on a large scale. It should involve school leaders; teacher associations; governors and trustees of schools; administrative services of both local and national government and dioceses with responsibility for schools, as well as parents and politicians.

On the assumption that ‘normal’ schooling won’t restart until January 2021 at the earliest, there are a number of key areas where information is needed before effective planning can take place.

These are based upon assumptions of classes of no more than 15 pupils– how many attend may be another matter.

Teaching spaces – how many extra spaces are needed by each school –

What community assets might be available to help? Teaching A level arts and humanities groups in church halls and empty office space might be easier than relocating some other year groups. But, could a village primary school adjacent to the village hall make use of its facilities. Each school needs to know its needs and what the community might be able to offer. There are risks, but there are risks leaving children in the community without any formal education arrangements.

Staff teaching and non-teaching

Oxfordshire is lucky to have three initial teacher education locations. The first need is to discover how any extra staff would be needed for all children to return to school on a maximum class size of 15. This is different to a Pupil Teacher Ratio of 15.

Assuming staffing costs at the top of the main scale for both teaching and non-teaching staff, some idea of the cost of the exercise can be calculated once the number of teaching units is known. Additional teachers could be employed on a termly basis, if necessary with emergency certification. Academies already have the right to employ anyone as a teacher and other school are allowed to do so ‘in extremis’. Retired teachers could be in high risks groups so not recommended as a main source of extra staff

Technology

All pupils need access to technology and there needs to be an audit of those without the technology and those without access to an internet connection. These problems need solving at a local level, using what government support is available, but not relying upon it.

Creating coherent learning packages is the role of the teaching force. The loss of a local advisory service makes this harder than it would have been in the past, but schools can identify where there are gaps and how we can best work to help drive learning forward., especially as some young people will not be able to attend school sites because of their own health or the health of others.

Support services

Bringing back all children requires full support services from transport to meals to health and welfare support.

We can sit back and wait for events or we can all work together to make things happen.

Bring back the Star Chamber?

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Bring back the Star Chamber? Head teachers retuned to schools on Monday to find that the simple form the DfE had be asking schools to complete about pupil attendance during lockdown had suddenly, and without warning, ballooned to one of over 19 pages in length.

Now, as someone that has made a career out of management information, I expect the required information is very useful to help Ministers answer the inevitable barrage of questions about their handling of the extension of the opening of schools. I nearly wrote re-opening, but of course, most schools never closed, and in some cases remained open during the Easter holiday period. As a result, it is wrong to talk of re-opening.

Anyway, in the past, it sometimes took up to two years to achieve a very small change in any data being collected from schools. I well recall the lead up to the introduction of the School Workforce Census, and the debates about what could and could not be collected.

Of course, the net result of imposing additional data collection on schools is that probably more schools will have thrown up their hands in horror and not returned anything, not even what they were returning by way of management information up to Friday of last week.

In one sense, I don’t suppose that Ministers will mind, assuming the demands originated from the political end of the DfE, since so long as they have some returns they can say ‘evidence suggests that …’ and nobody can gainsay the quality of the evidence, then they are satisfied. What ONS might make of this could be another matter.

I took part in a conference call on Tuesday with a hardworking set of local government officers, many of whom had been sending me emails over the weekend as they helped schools prepare for their new world order. So, this is the time and place to pay tribute to both the officers and the staff and governors of schools that have all worked so hard to keep the teaching and learning show on the road since lockdown was introduced.

Local authorities have had a hard time of it over the past thirty years, but those that have preserved a functioning education section have shown the value of a tier at this level to help the DfE manage the system. I don’t see all academies or MATs working with their Regional School Commissioners, but I do hear of them joining in with the local authority. And, as a politician, I know that parents turn to local politicians if they have any questions about what is happening. I wonder how many contact either RSCs or the DfE.

Issues of the span of control dominate structures in all organisations, and in the review of how the pandemic has been handled, the role of local authorities and education should be properly assessed and compared with the NHS and social care sectors, one of which has little or no local accountability these days and the other is a hybrid. Which works well and for what tasks?

Give us the data

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The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has produced a set of papers about deaths of those with COVID-19 and their occupational grouping. https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/covid19relateddeathsbyoccupationenglandandwalesdeathsregistereduptoandincluding20thapril2020

Teachers are seen as a group with a high possible exposure to any disease, presumably as they work close to large groups of children. In that respect, secondary school teachers interacting with many different pupils in the course of a day might been thought to have a higher potential risk factor than primary school teachers who are largely interacting with a smaller group of children each day. Of course, this is too simplistic, as it ignores the many other settings in schools from playgrounds, assemblies and meal times where all teachers can interact with large numbers of children. Primary teachers, and especially school leaders may have the added factor of interaction with parents that bring children to school and cluster at the school gate at the end of the day.

This data will no doubt have some bearing on the decisions about –reopening schools. The most useful table in the ONS data is Table 5 helpfully entitled ‘Deaths involving COVID-19 and all causes among minor occupation groups by sex (those aged 20-64 years), England and Wales, deaths registered up to and including 20th April 2020.’

ONS use SOC minor occupation Code 231 for Teaching and Educational Professionals. This Group includes HE, FE primary and secondary teachers and school lead, as well as SEN teachers, advisors and a catch-all group not classified under any of the other categories. Although men have more representation in some of the groups, women almost certainly dominate the group as a whole.

ONS recorded that 22 of the 95 recorded deaths for men in Group 231 were deaths involving COVID-19, as were 25 of the 143 recorded deaths among women in the Group. Of course, there may be other deaths not signified as COVID-19 related, perhaps due to a lack of testing or other underlying causes, especially early in the notification period that might make these underestimates. However, on this data ONS show males in the Group having a death rate of 6.7 per 100,000 (range 4.1 to 10.3) and women 3.3 (range 2.0 to 4.9) for COVID-19 related deaths. For women it may be important since many occupation groups don’t have enough data to provide a figure for COVID-19 related deaths. Group 231 for women has COVID-9 related deaths per 100,000 of the population at about half the rate for all Nursing and Midwifery professionals. For men, the figure of 6.7 compares to 10.5 for Construction and Building Trade Group 531.

Secondary teachers account for half the male COVID-19 total for Group 231, whereas women they account for only a quarter of the total for female COVID-19 deaths in the Group. However, six of the seven COVID-19 related deaths in the primary sector were women, so that across the two sectors the deaths were similar in total at twelve men and twelve women. However, with far more women in classroom teaching than men, this might suggest that as elsewhere, men are most likely to become a casualty of the pandemic.

This is the sort of data that the government and teacher associations will have to discuss when considering how to restart the education system. No doubt they will also use similar data for across the world, where it is available. On the face of it, there is a risk that is less than in some occupational groups, but possibly higher than in others. What level of risk is acceptable will be the key question.

Who have schools been kept open for?

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Coronavirus (COVID-19) attendance in education and early years settings – summary of returns. The DfE has today published a summary of four weeks’ of the educational establishment data up to 4pm on Friday 17 April 2020. This includes the Easter Bank holiday days when, of course, very few children used the school facilities available. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-attendance-in-education-and-early-years-settings

Picking the headlines form the returns the DfE state that

  • The attendance rate among pupils in educational establishments was around 1% during the week commencing 13 April 2020, which would have usually been part of the Easter holidays for most schools. Attendance was initially above 3% in the week commencing 23 March 2020.
  • The number of teachers in attendance has also fallen since then, suggesting that establishments are adapting to lower numbers of pupils and the latest advice on social distancing.
  • It was estimated on 16 April that 65,000 children were attending early years childcare – about 4% of the number of children who usually attend childcare in term time.

12,800 establishments provided a response to the DfE survey on Friday 17 April. This represents 52% of all establishments. The key findings were adjusted by the DfE for non-response (the report includes a note on the methodology for dealing with non-response and scaling up):

  • 61% of establishments were open – around 15,100 establishments. This has been stable during the most recent two weeks, having decreased since the first week of partial closures (when around 19,000 were open).
  • The most recent data suggests around 84,000 children attended an educational establishment on Friday 17 April, representing 0.9% of pupils who normally attend. Our analysis suggests that attendance on Monday 23 March was over 3% and that the attendance rate gradually fell – reaching 1.3% on Monday 30 March then 0.9% on Monday 6 April. Attendance during the following two weeks remained stable. This two week period of lower attendance corresponds with the Easter break, although for some parts of the country this would have started on 30 March and so attendance may increase from 20 April. In general, attendance has been higher mid-week.

24,000 of the children in attendance on Friday 17 April were classed by schools as vulnerable, down from 29,000 on Friday 3 April. We estimate this represents around 5% of all children and young people classified as ‘Children in Need’ or who have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).

  • 62,000 of the children in attendance on Friday 17 April were classed by schools as children of critical workers, down from 85,000 on Friday 3 April. We estimate that this represents around 2% of all children of critical workers, down from around 3% on 3 April.
  • These were cared for by 59,000 teaching staff and 43,000 non-teaching staff. The number of teachers in attendance continues to fall having been around five times this figure at the start of the first week of partial closures, suggesting that establishments are adapting to lower numbers of pupils and the latest advice on social distancing.

This is an impressive report to be produced so quickly. Sadly, we cannot tell from this report whether certain parts of the country are doing better than others at managing the education scene in these different and difficult times as the data is solely for England as a whole at this stage.

No doubt, the DfE that is calling local authorities on a regular basis, and presumably the larger MATs and diocese as well, now has a handle on what is going well in some parts of the country, and where there are still issues.

Officers, CEOs of MATs and headteachers will now be thinking about how the structure of a return to a post-modern world in the real sense of the term will be handled. The last thing we want or need is schools becoming transfer sites for the virus, and a spike in patients working in education settings because of a poorly thought through return to school.

One question also now emerging is; show Year 10 and Year 12 pupils be required or offered a chance to repeat the year that they will have missed nearly half of? If so, how can it be handled?