Teachers and school leaders have condemned the suggestion that staff could be bumped up the Covid-19 vaccination priority list in exchange for a shorter summer holiday.
As reported in The Sun, Whitehall insiders have suggested that teachers could be offered greater priority for vaccination in exchange for a longer summer term so that students can catch up on lost learning.
News: Catch-up tsar wants teachers to increase learning time
Related: PM appoints Sir Kevan Collins as Covid catch-up tsar
Profile: Meet Sir Kevan Collins - champion of education research
The newspaper reported that health minister Edward Argar said the government was considering “a whole range of things” to address lost learning, including a longer school day and shortening the summer holidays by a fortnight.
And Sir Kevan Collins, the new education catch-up tsar, has said that “all options” are on the table to ensure that pupils make up lost learning time. Yesterday, he said that teachers will be asked to increase learning time for pupils as part of the education recovery plan.
But heads warned against “distractions and policy gimmicks” in response to the news.
School leaders and teachers have condemned the idea of a trade-off between teacher vaccinations and a shorter summer holiday as “squalid” and “a nonsense”.
Coronavirus: Teachers ‘need vaccine as soon as possible’
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “We haven’t heard of any suggestion of teachers being bumped up the vaccination list in return for accepting a shorter summer holiday, and any such notion would clearly be squalid.
“The idea of a shorter summer holiday begs many questions and these also relate to how it would be received by parents and children. And vaccinations for education staff need to be provided as soon as possible, simply because it is the right thing to do.”
And Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said that while the union supported the idea of summer schools, linking this measure to teacher vaccination was “a nonsense”.
“What has teacher vaccination got to do with the length of the summer holiday? That’s my question,” she said.
“We have said teachers should be vaccinated as a priority, but we’ve never said when. There should be a survey about what teacher infection rates are - that would be important to know.
“The NEU work on this indicates teachers are at greater risk of infection. That should be the basis on which any decision about whether teachers are vaccinated, and when, is made. That has got nothing to do with the length of the summer holiday and to yoke those two together is just a nonsense.”
Dr Bousted added that the NEU supported summer schools for catch up, but said that these needed to be staffed by former teachers or NQTs who had not secured work in the pandemic, rather than being an obligation for teachers who had already worked throughout the school year.
Mr Barton added: “The speculation about extending the school day and summer term to help children catch-up with lost learning is misconceived and unhelpful.
“Many schools already run after-school activities and holiday clubs but this is totally different from a blanket requirement to grind out more hours of learning from tired children with the likelihood of diminishing returns.
“Mandatory attendance in the summer holidays would have to be enforced with fines for non-attendance, and we doubt this would be supported by families after a year of coronavirus restrictions.
“The essential element of catch-up support is quality rather than quantity, and schools are very good at identifying learning needs and putting in place the appropriate support.
“What they need from the government is sufficient funding to enable them to do this as effectively as possible rather than policy gimmicks.”
The Department for Education has been contacted for comment.
