Headteachers have written to education secretary Nadhim Zahawi calling on him to keep Covid tests freely available to parents, pupils and teachers to minimise disruption to this year’s GCSE and A level exams.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), has questioned why tests will no longer be made freely available to most people after the end of this month and urged the government to reverse this plan.
He warned that Covid absence in schools was still causing disruption and there were cases where staff illness from the virus and a lack of supply teachers had led to whole year groups being sent home this week.
Mr Barton revealed that ASCL was among a number of trade unions and other organisations that had written to Mr Zahawi this week urging him to ensure Covid tests remained freely available.
Speaking at a press conference ahead of ASCL’s annual conference, which starts today, he urged the government to ensure regular Covid testing continued for staff and pupils in schools.
The requirement for twice-weekly testing for secondary schools ended last month and tests will no longer be free to the general public from 1 April.
Mr Barton said: “We were told that the two ways through this [pandemic] were vaccination and testing.”
And he questioned “this idea that tests are suddenly not going to be routinely available and not be free to parents”.
He added: “We wrote a joint letter with a whole series of other organisations yesterday direct to the secretary of state saying you must keep these test kits available, because if we really want these young people to be there for their exams or they want their teacher to be there to help prepare for the exams, then part of the way we do that is is to continue to have testing.”
The government announced last month that special schools will still be able to receive free Covid tests and mainstream schools will be able to receive them in the event of an outbreak.
ASCL’s two-day conference will include speeches from Mr Zahawi, Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman and Labour’s shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson.
At a briefing ahead of the conference in Birmingham, Mr Barton and ASCL president Pepe Di’Iasio set out the key concerns of school leaders.
Call to modernise exams
Mr Di’lasio said that assessment methods used in GCSE and A-level exams should move beyond crowds of pupils sitting papers in “sweaty” sports halls.
He said “the idea of being in a sports hall or putting 300 young people in summer in sweaty hot conditions” was “not appropriate”.
Technology should be used to adapt the exams to make them “equally robust if not better”, rather than relying on “Victorian” assessment methods, the ASCL president said.
Mr Barton said that both Ofqual’s chair Ian Bauckham and chief regulator Jo Saxton had recognised that part of their role was looking at the reinvention of the future exam.
“None of that is a quick hit but the fact that this is being recognised pretty much everywhere but not yet in the Department for Education is I think quite heartening for me,” he said.
Questions over academisation targets
With the government’s forthcoming White Paper expected to identify 2030 as a target for having all state schools based in multi-academy trusts, ASCL’s leaders sounded a note of caution over the government’s priorities
Mr Di’Iasio said that in the forthcoming education White Paper, “we have a movement towards a lot of talk about structures once again, about a fully academised system.”
He said that this would not be at the top of headteachers’ agendas at the conference, with concerns about paying electricity and gas bills, or making sure pupils had “food on the table”, being at the forefront of their minds.
Mr Barton said that the government needed to win hearts and minds in order to ensure more schools moved into multi-academy trusts.
He said that ASCL thought all schools should be in collaborative partnerships but that this did not necessarily have to be within a MAT.
Mr Barton also warned that the government would undermine “its morale imperative” if it said to schools: “If you don’t do this then something is going to happen to you.”
‘Don’t demonise parents or pupils on attendance and behaviour’
Mr Barton, said that there was an “eye-watering and worrying” number of pupils missing from the system and highlighted children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza’s report, which estimated that nearly 1.8 million pupils had missed at least 10 per cent of their schooling last term.
He said that the government’s White Paper being expected to focus on behaviour and attendance was “a good thing”.
However, he warned against demonising parents or pupils on the issues.
He said: “We need to make sure we are helping and supporting parents who are often tearing their hair out because of the young people who are not coming into school rather than demonising them or simply throwing red meat to the backbenchers saying we are going to be tough on behaviour, we’re going to have silent corridors, we’re going to fine parents.
“This would be totally the wrong time to do that kind of simplistic polarised stuff. This must be about doing everything we can to get those young people back into a place where they’re getting more than just lessons - they’re getting the whole socialisation that our best schools bring them.”
