This week, on the 10th anniversary of the Equality Act coming into law, I have the task of giving evidence before MPs about the unequal impact of Covid-19 on pupils.

Chiefly, the Equality Act affects schools through the public sector equality duty, which covers all the protected characteristics: race, disability, sex, age, religion or belief, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, gender reassignment, and marriage and civil partnership. 

Leaders typically take a whole-school approach to this, aiming to foster good relations between people and groups of all kinds.

In my view, tolerance, respect and self-awareness are values that we want our pupils to learn and adopt from the first moment they arrive in our schools. These values will help our learners to grow, develop and mature safely into adulthood.

Every young person needs to know how it feels to be valued and of equal worth. 

Leaders typically take a whole-school approach to this, aiming to foster good relations between people and groups of all kinds.

In my view, tolerance, respect and self-awareness are values that we want our pupils to learn and adopt from the first moment they arrive in our schools. These values will help our learners to grow, develop and mature safely into adulthood.

Every young person needs to know how it feels to be valued and of equal worth. 

Every young person has the right to feel proud of themselves, whatever their personal circumstances might be, whatever they hear and see in the world around them.

Coronavirus: A powerful spotlight on inequalities

This can feel out of reach for many young people, at the best of times. And 2020 is the worst of times for pupils who feel that the deck is already stacked against them.

Covid-19 has shone the most powerful spotlight imaginable on to the inequalities that young people face every day.

NAHT is extremely concerned that the pandemic has hit pupils in very different ways, with some much more able to continue their learning than others.

Black and minority ethnic pupils are one particular group where there is justifiable cause for concern. The higher rates of infection and higher number of deaths linked to the coronavirus among black and Asian ethnic groups means that pupils from these communities are more likely to be coping with the effects of illness, fear for themselves, their families and their friends, or grief for lost loved ones.

To compound this, according to the Office for National Statistics, 33 per cent of children in mixed and 30 per cent of children from black ethnic groups are living in low-income households, which is, respectively, 13 per cent and 10 per cent higher than the national average. That is a double disadvantage for black, Asian and/or minority ethnic pupils to overcome

The impact on disadvantaged pupils

Pupils with additional needs and identifiable SEND requirements are also feeling the impact of coronavirus more acutely than other students.

Over half (53 per cent) of special-school leaders reported to NAHT that at least one pupil had not returned to school because they are at greater risk of coronavirus. This is almost five times the figure for mainstream schools, where the figure is 11 per cent. Forty per cent of school leaders said pupils with SEND needed a supported transition back to school. For mainstream schools, this figure was 6 per cent.

The pupils who we were most concerned about before the pandemic seem to have had the worst of it during lockdown.

This is why it is so frustrating for school leaders that the failure of the Covid testing system means so many pupils are being kept out of school unnecessarily because they are waiting too long for a test. The government needs to fix this urgently; otherwise, its “levelling up” agenda will ring very hollow for a good many pupils and their families.

While it is too early to make any definitive statements about the impact of the current crisis on the gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers, I can’t stress strongly enough that the advantage gap existed long before the pandemic. 

Lockdown brought the gap into focus, but it did not create it. Nobody sensible would assume that a return to normal will cause it to close back up again.

If anything, a return to normal would be the worst thing for disadvantaged pupils.

For example, according to the Education Policy Institute, by the time they take their GCSEs, disadvantaged pupils are more than 18 months of learning behind their peers. This gap is the same as it was five years ago. Despite our best efforts in schools, the needle is not moving for these children.

The need for proper funding

If we want schools to play their part in the national recovery from Covid, including narrowing the disadvantage gap until it disappears to nothing, the least the government can do is finance this work properly. It goes without saying that, in our view, this is not happening.

Catch-up funding, although amounting to around £1 billion nationally, only equates to about £80 per child. Schools and colleges are having to raid their already threadbare budgets to pay for the additional cleaning and protective measures that the government demands, with no additional government funds to call upon for this requirement.

The services that schools and families commonly rely on are already at breaking point. The government should ask itself whether this is seriously the upper limit of its ambition for young people.

Writing these words on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Equality Act, I am reminded of how far we still need to go.

If we’re brave enough and smart enough, even though Covid seems to have fractured the world around us beyond recognition, there is at least the possibility that, as we start to put the pieces of our lives back together, we will do it in a way that finally breaks the link between the hand you’re dealt at birth and the life you can go on to lead.

That is what we must do if the Equality Act is to become more than just a piece of paper.

Ruth Davies is the president of the NAHT headteachers’ union