It is “unforgivable” that schools still don’t have guidelines from the government on how it expects them to move to the “living with Covid” phase in just two days’ time, a headteachers’ leader warned today.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, told Tes that the situation with Covid is now on a “knife edge”, with school leaders reporting that they are having to use office administrative staff to run lessons and have lost close to 1,500 hours of in-person learning in a single term.
The union leader has criticised the Department for Education after talks about Covid in schools due to be held with stakeholders in the sector were cancelled yesterday.
Speaking to Tes, he said: “It feels like the level of transmission has taken them by surprise and it feels again like things are on a knife edge.
“We are expected to move to the stage where we are living with Covid on Friday, and yet schools still do not have guidance about this.
“It takes us right back to the mismanagement of the pandemic, where announcements were coming at the last minute and people were waiting until 10 in the evening.
”You would hope by now that they would have got on top of it - it’s pretty unforgivable to be in this situation again, I think.”
Schools struggling with Covid staff absence
Mr Barton said that “every other email “ he receives is from heads warning of how difficult it is to manage Covid in their school.
This includes a school where leaders have been forced to use administrative staff to lead classes because of staff absence through the virus and an inability to find supply staff.
The number of Covid cases was up across all age groups in the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) data, covering up to the end of last week (19 March). Cases among primary pupils were up from 7.55 per cent to 8.48 per cent of children aged 2 to Year 6, compared with a week previously. For Years 7 to 11, the figure was 5.29 per cent, up from 3.99 per cent the previous week.
Testimony from headteachers seen by Tes also includes school leaders warning that Covid is now “worse than any other time in the last two years”.
They said: “Because the government are saying everything is back to normal, the general public don’t understand how hard it is.”
Another school leader, who runs a one-form-entry primary school, said it had had 55 confirmed cases of Covid in the past two weeks. “For at least the last month, it’s felt like a tsunami of cases and it is only now starting to ease off a little,” they added.
Other schools have reported close to half of their teaching staff or pupils testing positive for Covid this term, and there are warnings that “some of those who have had Covid previously are still not 100 per cent”.
One headteacher asked: “Is there ever going to be a point where the government will listen to school leaders and understand the strain we are under?
“As we limp into the last week of term, I start Monday with five more staff off due to Covid. That’s 35 staff since January, 245 days lost and 1,470 hours of learning gone in a single term. We don’t need extended school weeks, we don’t need DfE wellbeing programmes and we don’t need poorly conceived tutoring programmes. We just need our staff in school so we can teach our full curriculum like we used to do.”
‘Because the government are saying everything is back to normal, the general public don’t understand how hard it is’
In a video message to ASCL members, Mr Barton criticised the government over the lack of “living with Covid” guidelines for schools.
He said: “We think it is completely unacceptable that from 1 April - that is, Friday - you don’t know what living with Covid will mean in your PRU [pupil-referral unit], your school, your college.
“We haven’t had those guidelines, the discussions we were expecting to have about those guidelines aren’t happening.
“The reason I am particularly concerned about this is that I have got Covid…I know I have got Covid because the free lateral flow test that I took tells me that.
“So what happens from Friday, from next Monday., if I wake up with the symptoms that I woke up with this morning - so I have got a sore throat, temperature, and I have got a headache and I’ve got nausea.... What do I do from Monday if I am a pupil and I haven’t got access to the free lateral flow tests: Do I simply treat it like a cold and go in?
“Of course, it’s not like a cold in the way that it spreads and in the way it can get to vulnerable people.”
Mr Barton urged the government to ensure that lateral flow tests remain free for anyone with Covid symptoms at least until June.
Prime minister Boris Johnson announced last month that free Covid tests for the general public would come to an end on 1 April.
At the time the Department for Education said secondary schools would still be able to apply for free tests in the event of a Covid outbreak.
A DfE email to heads this week informed them that the in-school Covid-19 vaccination programme will end on Friday 1 April:12- to 15-year-olds will still be able to access the vaccine outside of school, at a vaccination centre, pharmacy or walk-in centre.
Healthy five- to 11-year-olds will be offered the Covid-19 vaccine from the beginning of April. Vaccinations will take place outside of school, in vaccination centres, pharmacies, GP surgeries and walk-in centres.
The DfE said in a blog on Wednesday that regular testing in special schools will end at the end of term on Friday (1st April), adding that tests will be made available in ‘SEND settings’ that have an outbreak and it has been advised by the local health protection team.
A Government spokesperson said: “We are now moving to living with - and managing - the virus, while maintaining the population’s wall of protection and communicating safer behaviours that the public can follow to manage risk.”
