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Reception class at Manor Park school and nursery in Knutsford, Cheshire, on 5 November.
Reception class at Manor Park school and nursery in Knutsford, Cheshire, on 5 November. Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA
Reception class at Manor Park school and nursery in Knutsford, Cheshire, on 5 November. Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA

Teachers have been on the frontline every day during Covid. So why scapegoat them?

This article is more than 3 years old
Polly Toynbee

To distract from its mishandling of the pandemic, the UK government has found a new target. But the public don’t buy it

Since time immemorial, Tories have conducted culture wars against teachers, from their gay people-bashing, section 28 days to Michael Gove’s assaults on “the blob”. This week Gavin Williamson has been forced to retreat from his recent eye-catching ban on schools using material from groups with “a desire to end capitalism”, likening it to the “endorsement of illegal activity” (such as the internal market bill?). Anti-racism, environmental and other campaigners threatened a court case, so now “the wording of the guidance is being reviewed”.

All through the pandemic schools have been under attack, as government scapegoating of teachers acts as a distraction from Britain’s Covid failures. Boris Johnson tried unsuccessfully to goad Keir Starmer in prime minister’s questions yesterday when Starmer raised teachers’ justified concerns. This week, Greenwich and Islington councils called off plans to shut their schools a few days early, faced with sky-rocketing infections in their boroughs due to Williamson’s threatened legal action.

What an empty gesture, when today No 10 itself announced there would only be “staggered” returns to secondary schools in January. Of course schools should the last to close, for the sake of children and working parents, but the move rode roughshod over school and local authority decision-making.

The decision comes after Williamson dropped another surprise without consulting schools. The idea is to prevent every pupil and teacher in contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid having to self-isolate; instead those without symptoms will be tested at school every day for seven days after being identified as a close contact. Excellent, if that prevents lost school days for those who never develop the virus – but it reveals his determined ignorance about how schools are struggling.

“This needs a mobile unit arriving in the playground, with people to administer the tests and the records,” says Robin Bevan, headteacher at Southend High School for Boys in Essex. He calculates that such logistics would require 100,000 testers to cover every school and college. But no such help is coming: schools will be left to do it themselves. They get a 15-minute training video, PPE and lateral-flow tests that produce an answer in 30 minutes. Where is the extra space needed to set up isolated bays? Bevan has already purchased two marquees for extra distancing purposes, but now the tent company has run out. Where are the resources for extra staff members to run five-minute testing slots (allowing for cleaning)? And every child tested will need administratively cumbersome parental permission.

No money comes with these tests: Bevan estimates the cheapest extra staff would cost £7,500 a week. He already has a £250,000 deficit, with a 20% cut since 2010; the national average cut is 8%. Covid has cost £60,000 due to lost revenue from hiring out school buildings, and opened windows adding a third to heating costs.

Neither parents nor ministers see what schools do behind the scenes to stay open. When any Covid case is identified, everyone they shared a class with for the previous two days has to be contacted. This involves checking timetables and registers, with each case taking three staff two hours to do that parental contacting.

In the first lockdown Bevan’s school delivered 50,000 virtual lessons, and just a few parents complained about lack of personal contact with teachers. Some unfairly drew comparisons with private schools that taught a full timetable of lessons, despite having smaller classes and three times more money per child. “They forget, in a secondary school, a maths teacher has 250 pupils, humanities teach 350, PE, art and DT around 500.” He has 24 staff and some 500 students self-isolating today, so teaching both online and in person doubles what some teachers do.

That’s why staff are arriving long before school and staying long after – keeping records, alerting families and, most important, says this headteacher, spending time checking in on the large number of pupils they worry about. Bevan has maxed out his school’s pupil premiums on laptops for every student without one, as the government has failed to provide those it promised. A Knowsley school that was promised 1,065 received just 282.

If anyone thinks teachers don’t care, listen to Bevan saying that he is “on the verge of tears” when he has to go in to tell a class they must to go home for two weeks due to a Covid case. “The children are so upset at leaving.” Government teacher-bashing, echoed by the rightwing press, is part knee-jerk cultural dislike, part disguise for education cuts. Here’s a Sun columnist this week: “Is there any profession in the country which has had an easier, stress-free nine months than the teaching profession?”

The public disagrees. Ipsos Mori’s Veracity Index finds that people regard teachers as fourth most trusted to tell the truth of 25 professions, just after nurses, doctors and dentists. Journalists are fourth from last, politicians last.

Teachers have provided frontline work every day during this pandemic, but their pay is frozen. Experienced teachers have lost 15% in real terms since 2010, says their union. Britain has always undervalued education, and it has always paid the price of doing so. “Teachers shouldn’t be heroes,” Bevan says. “You only need heroes in an emergency.”

  • Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

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