Scotland’s biggest teaching union is calling on the government to reduce class sizes in upper secondary if there is to be no social distancing among students.
According to the EIS general secretary, Larry Flanagan, Scottish teachers should not face classes of 30 young adults in August when the Scottish government’s scientific advisers have admitted there is less evidence about the role that older pupils play in the transmission of the virus.
Mr Flanagan also told Tes Scotland that proactive testing of school communities was needed for schools to reopen so that schools were “actively monitored for the virus”. In addition, he called for more funding to support the education recovery of pupils.
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The Scottish government has promised £100 million over two years to support the reopening of schools, but Mr Flanagan said that sum came “nowhere close” to paying for the staffing levels that would be required after months of lockdown.
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Additional funding was also needed, he said, to pay for the regular cleaning that would be needed to keep teachers and pupils safe.
Mr Flanagan said: “We need the details of the additional funding that is going to be available now - £50 million a year is nowhere close to the staffing levels required. The money that is currently on the table is not enough; they should be signing up every teacher they can get.”
He continued: “We don’t think no physical distancing among senior pupils is sufficient in itself; we think there has to be some mitigation in there.
“If you don’t have absolute physical distancing then you should at least have smaller classes so that teachers are not dealing with 30 young adults in a classroom. A starting point should be practical class sizes which have 20 rather than 30 pupils.”
In a report on physical distancing published today, the government’s scientific advisers said that while the role of children in transmission of the coronavirus was understood to be limited, it was “less clear” what the situation was “in relation to older, secondary school students”.
However, the advisers went on to conclude that no social distancing among students should be the approach taken in secondary “on the basis of the balance of known risks, the effectiveness of mitigations and the benefits to young people of being able to attend school”.
They said that, “wherever possible”, 2m social distancing should remain in place between adults, and between adults and children.
