The country’s education recovery commissioner has said that over-centralisation has been revealed to be a weakness in the education system during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sir Kevan Collins highlighted providing school lunches to pupils as an example of something that could be better done locally rather than nationally, when asked what weaknesses had been revealed by the coronavirus crisis.
He also highlighted the variation in pupils’ experience of education in lockdown and their access to technology as inequalities that needed to be addressed.
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Sir Kevan, the government’s catch-up tsar, was asked about what strengths and weaknesses had been revealed in the education system during the Covid-19 crisis during a question-and-answer session at the Association of School and College Leaders’ annual conference today.
He responded that the situation had highlighted the best and worst of the system.
He said: “I think we have seen the limits of over-centralisation.
“I believe in localism. I believe in place. I was the director of education in East London and I think we demonstrated what you can do in places like Tower Hamlets, in the most deprived communities, when you work with the grain of your communities.
“If it comes to, I don’t know, lunches for children - actually let’s do that locally. That is how that is solved.
“If we want to put summer activities on for young people, let’s do that locally, let’s harness the resources. Over-centralisation has been revealed to be a weakness of the system.”
He continued: “The other thing we grapple with all the time is the variation in our system. Literally, you could be within the same town and have an experience in Covid where you were given incredible resources, incredible support from your school and unbelievable access, or you could be next door and have connectivity, no laptop.
“So this inequality, this variation, is something we do need to think about and face because I worry that growing inequality could be a legacy of Covid in all sorts of ways in our life but we shouldn’t let it be an education legacy.”
He highlighted school staff commitment, innovation and embracing technology as strengths of the system during Covid-19.
He said: “Look at the way teachers and headteachers just kept driving their communities to delivering things, being there for their families; this deep commitment we have, this relationship we have, is always one of the great strengths of our system.”
