Fears abound about the impact of the lockdown on pupils’ mental health and wellbeing, as well as their attainment - but the general secretary of Scotland’s largest teaching union has greater concerns about the demands on pupils over the next school year.
Larry Flanagan, of the EIS, raised concerns about the damage that could be done if pupils have to become accustomed to a mix of teaching in school and home learning for a lengthy period.
He said that social distancing in school would likely be necessary for the foreseeable future to keep teachers and pupils safe, and that careful planning could help mitigate against the negative impact of part-time schooling. One key issue that had to be addressed was equity of access to online learning, he said.
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Mr Flanagan said: “There have been significant improvements ever since the start of lockdown around the issuing of hardware, but there’s little point in having a laptop if you don’t have wi-fi in your house, so we still have a long way to go.”
He added: “To be honest, if pupils were going back in August into normal classrooms then the impact of lockdown could be addressed reasonably quickly, but we are looking at a year of blended teaching and learning that’s potentially more significant than the 10 or 12 weeks of lockdown.
“The expectation is that social distancing is here to stay until we have a vaccine - I’ve not heard anyone suggest that social distancing might end before a vaccine is available.”
The UK government has announced that schools in England could be open by 1 June. However, in Scotland the government has said it is unlikely that schools will reopen before August, while an Education Recovery Group - involving education directors, headteachers’ organisations and teaching unions - has been created to establish the best way forward when they do.
Mr Flanagan said teachers would need time to prepare for the mix of school and home learning they are to deliver next year, as well as information on how the qualifications are going to be delivered before schools reopened.
He called for the exams to be cancelled next year - something that the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association (SSTA) has also proposed - and for national qualifications to be based on a combination of teacher judgement and continuous assessment.
The removal of both prelim and real exams would allow schools to claw back around eight to 10 weeks of teaching time, he pointed out.
Pupils entering their fourth year of secondary in August should study for exit qualifications over two years, he said.
In an interview with Tes Scotland, Mr Flanagan said: “We think fourth-year pupils should be starting two-year courses to maximise the time for learning and teaching and to minimise the pressure on the schools. We have always supported exit qualifications. The simple fact is around 95 or 96 per cent stay on until S5 so S4 qualifications by and large only get you on to the next level of study.
“In S5, there needs to be clarity about what qualifications will look like because it’s unfair to assess people on a course if you have not given them adequate time for the teaching and learning of it. If S5 pupils get 160 hours of teaching per course, schools will be struggling to provide any education for anyone else.
“We want some form of continuous assessment across the year and a move away from a high-stakes exam diet at the end of the year. There’s a case to be made for that just in terms of having an effective assessment system but there’s also a strong case in terms of future proofing the qualifications against a further outbreak of Covid-19. It would be unforgivable if we got to May next year and had to cancel the diet again because we had just stuck to what we had done before.”
