As someone who likes learning things, I’d have been happy to be taught the name of an unfamiliar Greek alphabet letter, Omicron, in normal circumstances. But, frankly, these aren’t normal circumstances.

The unnerving emergence of a new Covid-19 variant, which threatens to unleash a fresh wave of havoc on schools, colleges, and the country in general, deserves a serious response.

You might expect the Department for Education and its ministers therefore to be talking about robust pre-emptive action to keep schools open and children in the classroom, about the support that they will provide to a sector that is already on its knees coping with wave after wave of disruption.

What we might not have expected was for them to be talking about - amid an ongoing public health crisis - is, er, nativity plays.

But that is indeed the subject that they alighted on - not just once but on several occasions - during the course of a week that surely deserved a more statesmanlike response.

So, we had the unhelpful intervention of education secretary Nadhim Zahawi telling ITV’s This Morning that his “very strong advice is if you’ve organised nativities, carry on”.

And this was followed by a tweet from the DfE saying: “Your child’s nativity, school Christmas play or concert can still go ahead.” For good measure, it added: “There will be Covid safety measures in place for parents and carers attending.”

No expertise 

This is really all so obvious that it should not need saying, but here goes anyway.

It is not the job of the education secretary or the DfE to make operational decisions about the running of schools. That responsibility belongs to headteachers and their leadership teams.

This is not a touchy, pedantic point but simply a matter of common sense.

Leadership teams make these decisions because they know the circumstances in their communities on the ground, and they have spent their careers learning how to run schools.

The education secretary and the DfE are not in a position to offer strong advice or tell parents that events can go ahead in the thousands of schools that operate up and down the country.

They don’t know the situation and have no experience of running schools. Nor do they know the state of ventilation in local school halls, or levels of Covid anxiety in these communities.

In a very literal sense, they don’t know what they are talking about.

What ministers should be able to discern, however, is that this is a very challenging set of circumstances.

Many schools are experiencing high rates of pupil and teacher absence which may make holding nativity plays very difficult, and many will be concerned about the potential for Covid transmission in school communities that have been battered by the impact of the virus over the past 20 months.

Whatever decision a school makes, it deserves to be respected because it will have been based on that school’s best assessment of the range of factors affecting that individual setting.

Creating conflict 

Unsurprisingly then, a poll by Teacher Tapp, of 1,711 primary school teachers in England, found that 27 per cent of primary school teachers said their school is only planning to run nativity shows online this year, and 10 per cent said their school is not planning to host any nativity play.

The trouble is that when the education secretary and the DfE suggest that nativity plays should go ahead they are tacitly criticising schools that do not do so and thus setting them up for complaints from parents.

They must know that this is the effect of such statements and it is hard to escape the conclusion that they are deliberately banging a populist drum to distract attention from the absence of meaningful action on their part.

What action they have taken is decidedly lacklustre.

A litany of confused responses 

On the issue of good ventilation, which is widely regarded as an effective way of reducing the risk of transmission, it has taken the government 20 months to reach the point of telling most schools and colleges that if they want air cleaning units for their classrooms they will have to buy them from an “online marketplace” (which they haven’t yet set up).

On asymptomatic testing, another proven mitigation against Covid, secondary schools have once again been dumped with the huge job of setting up testing stations for returning pupils at the beginning of next term with very little in the way of material support.

In the meantime, the take-up of twice-weekly lateral flow home testing among eligible pupils is variable and badly needs much more government support by way of a public information campaign.

On vaccinations, the single most effective weapon in the fight against Covid, the rollout to schools of the first dose of the vaccine was hampered by the fact the health teams responsible for the programme clearly did not have the resources for an operation of the scale and speed required.

A second dose is now planned, and it can only be hoped that the government ensures the programme is better resourced this time round.

On the staff absences being experienced by many schools, the government has thankfully agreed to reopen the Covid workforce fund to provide financial assistance, but the time window for claims is narrow and the eligibility criteria contains a maze of conditions.

Other than the return of face coverings in secondary school and college communal areas, and self-isolation for close contacts of Omicron cases, that’s about it.

It’s not an impressive list.

Pretty much all of the above has felt muddled, half-hearted and ponderous, rather than providing the decisive and firm action that the situation requires.

Perhaps this is why it has proved a great deal easier for some to posture pointlessly about the importance of nativity plays.

Geoff Barton is general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders