Working at a secondary school during the coronavirus pandemic is a surreal experience. Social distancing is impossible: some kids say they can’t stop hugging their friends. Others cough into tissues and throw them at each other, or cough directly into each other’s faces. Many of them thrive off the anarchy. If you don’t talk about Covid-19, you’ve lost them. Giving lessons as before is impossible.
On Monday, around 80 per cent of students showed up – on Wednesday it was around 70 per cent. We had to send three year groups home because there was simply not enough staff to make the school safe.
There were at least 30 members of staff off – a massive drop because people weren’t able to come in. Staff have had to make hard choices about whether to go to work or stay at home. If you live with someone in the vulnerable risk group, should you go into work at all – even if neither of you have any symptoms – because you're going into an environment where it might exist? Some have stayed away because of that. Others have coronavirus symptoms and have had to self-isolate.
There is a sense of purpose, but for some time now this has felt untenable. Schools should have shut last Friday.
Now that the government has finally made a decision, there is a big problem. This situation will be particularly harmful for some kids who need free school meals, students that have an EHCP Education, Health and Care Plan and those that are neglected or abused. They're going to really suffer.
I know that a long period of closure will mean that the in-built disadvantage for some children at school – like class disparity, how many resources they have at home or how much they are going to learn – will simply grow bigger.
The kids that have a lot at home to draw on, like books, resources, or good teachers will be able to work remotely at home. And those that don't won't. This will disproportionately affect the worst off.
I think it will have a big impact: the longer the time out of school, the more extreme. But that students will be working and learning in the same way as they do at school is certainly not the case.
The fact is, there was an astounding level of unpreparedness for this. Universities have podcasts, virtual environments, videos – none of that has transferred over to the secondary school system. If we had more systems in place and more technology, then we'd be in a better position to provide quality learning experiences. And although we are under pressure to make sure that they are doing work at home, there is very little resource to check that kids are actually doing their work.
Not a lot of schools have any technology available to have an interactive classroom. None of the remote working apps are feasible. You can’t just Skype kids – there are massive child protection issues. You could have Google teams, or WhatsApp groups to conduct class discussions – but those also have issues and there is no time to implement them properly. So what you’re left with is an online platform that parents and students can access where we leave tasks to do week by week, and ask them to communicate by email.
We can encourage students to email us back the work they do, but we don't really have a mechanism to compel them to. You can’t keep kids behind in class, you can’t contact home in the same way. And so it's going to be incredibly difficult to monitor and give feedback and ensure that work remains consistent.
GCSE and A-levels look like they’ve been cancelled. So there's a serious question: what will happen to those two particular groups of year 11 and year 13s? How do they progress to their next step of education? How would that be decided? A lot of pupils have been preparing for months. If schools were closed until September and GCSE and A-level exams were postponed until then, after months of being at home, that would just be cruel.
The government has been reactive rather than proactive, and things are happening after they need to. There is no communication between the government and schools – the senior leadership at school is in the dark, they find out what is going on by watching the news, not from the Department of Education. There is a lack of clear guidance.
It feels like the government is saying “sort it out, guys”. And now, we’re going to have to.
As told to Natasha Bernal
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
