Secretary of State aims to ‘protect’ education in the UK as SNE calls for regional context to be remembered
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi has announced this week that he wants to protect education in the UK “in the way we protected the NHS.”
Speaking at an event at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, Zahawi added that he was aware of the impact education has on life chances. This mirrors the position Schools North East has maintained since the beginning of the pandemic, acknowledging school staff as they became the ‘fourth emergency service’ in the country. However, it must be stressed that, just because those working in education can go above and beyond for their students, families and wider communities, it does not mean that they should do so without the appropriate resources and support from other agencies.
This week, Schools North East hosted a roundtable with Ian Mearns MP for Gateshead and member of the Parliamentary Education Select Committee and school leaders from the region, where staff and student wellbeing was repeatedly mentioned as critical priorities – a timely point, considering Zahawi’s desire to protect the profession.
While schools have, for the most part, returned well since the summer break, staff are already feeling pressured and burnt-out, with many school leaders citing that they feel they haven’t had a break since March 2020, when the pandemic began. This is mainly due to additional responsibilities, such as caring for students’ mental health during lockdown, as well as looking after their own families. Since the return, many schools have noted the impact of the pandemic on families that were already struggling pre-covid, who are now increasingly desperate and turning to schools for help; help that staff and budgets are not geared-up to provide.
Since returning in September, school staff have also felt less able to balance their increasing workloads and this has had a detrimental effect on their wellbeing. Furthermore, with some staff absences, schools have stated that it is difficult to operate and support their students as effectively as they would wish. This also makes them feel that they are unable to implement long-term strategies and that they are constantly fire-fighting.
Although Schools North East welcomes Zahawi’s announcement that he will always prioritise schools remaining open, he must address a range of anxieties that school staff are increasingly feeling in regard to budgets, rising covid cases, student wellbeing in the most disadvantaged areas, and fears around the return of full Ofsted inspections. As was noted at the Ian Mearns MP roundtable this week, leaders are very concerned as to what Ofsted will inspect when they arrive in their schools. Many school leaders were worried that the inspection framework is no longer fit to measure schools after the pandemic, or that Ofsted is not truly aware of what schools have done for their students during the crisis.
A continuous theme from the roundtable and various network meetings with schools was the idea that ‘catch-up’ appears at the moment to be a buzz-phrase used by the government to mean make up for academic learning lost due to the pandemic. School leaders expressed serious concern over how to balance academic ‘catch up’ with providing effective emotional support. This is a particular concern of primary schools, who have noted a distinct lack in basic skills for pupils returning after lockdown such as toileting, speech and language, and behaviour.
Primary schools felt that SATs were a hindrance to addressing lost learning and secondary schools were very frustrated that announcements regarding Summer 22’s exam arrangements did not come before returning for the new academic year – both these instances create further unnecessary time pressures on an already strained timeframe for school staff.
With regards to protecting education, the Secretary of State must also take into consideration student wellbeing, another key point raised at this week’s roundtable.
Throughout the pandemic, schools had to fill the gaps left by services that were unavailable or inaccessible to students. The full extent of the impact of this only became apparent when students returned to school.
It is vital that the Education Secretary takes positive action to address these points, rather than focus simply on keeping schools open at any price. When developing policy he must resist the desire to oversimplify and create one-size-fits-all approaches that will further hinder schools in our region as they seek to help the young people in our region recover as quickly as possible from the effects of the pandemic.