A joint union letter from unions covering teachers, school leaders and school support staff has been sent to James Cleverly (new Ed Sec) asking for some sort of plan of action to help schools keep running during an anticipated winter covid wave.
It points out that nearly 1 in 5 pupils were not in school the first week of July. As covid absences are no longer being recorded and pupils are no longer testing, it's not known how many of these were due to covid, but as it coincided with a surge in covid, it seems likely that this was the reason for many of them.
As pupils are no longer testing, these would not be perfectly well children stuck at home (as is usually argued), rather that they were genuinely ill.
Large numbers of pupils missing school is obviously disruptive to education. We also had huge numbers of absences in the January wave.
The government's covid catch-up plan for children has basically collapsed, and per my other thread in chat, school funding has just been massively cut which will mean redundancies, so these absences aren't going to come with extra support to make up for them.
School staff have also suffered massive absences due to covid, which has put huge strain on the budget for supply teachers; and of course, there weren't nearly enough supply teachers despite the call for an army of volunteers, leading to class closures and large groups of children being babysat in school halls. There was a crisis fund for supply teachers, this needs to be reinstated.
What the unions are asking for is measures to slow the spread - money for ventilation improvements (this would also help schools during heatwaves), air filters which are proven to slow the spread, a push on vaccinations, free lateral flow tests (NOTE: not regular testing, merely access to tests), guidance for face coverings where cases are high, as well as public health messaging, and risk assessments for vulnerable and pregnant staff.
Will the government do anything to support education this time or is regular disruption to learning just going to be something children have to put up with?
www.unison.org.uk/content/uploads/2022/07/Joint-union-letter-to-Secretary-of-State-Covid-mitigations-21-July-2022.pdf