Every time that a student or staff member tests positive for Covid-19, schools are faced with the same challenge that they have repeatedly faced throughout this pandemic: what do we prioritise first, health or education?
Of course, the answer is that we need to prioritise both - and this is what the current guidance is supposed to do. However, striking the right balance between health and education is not easy.
Having been a part of the rapid response required to prevent further transmission of the virus following a positive test at school a couple of times now, I am not convinced that the guidance given by the authorities really delivers on protecting either health or education. Here’s why.
It ignores the possibility of airborne transmission
If we take health first, it surprises me that the first priority of the DfE helpline workers seems to be to minimise the number of students sent home. In my experience so far, most of the focus has been on identifying those who were within a two-metre radius of the infected person for 15 minutes or more, using seating plans and checking distances between desks.
To find out about close contacts outside of lessons we have been reliant on the memory and honesty of the person who has tested positive.
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This all makes sense if Covid-19 is transmitted by droplets, which are unlikely to travel more than two metres. I am no scientist, but my understanding is that this is far from certain, because it seems to ignore the strong possibility of airborne transmission.
If the virus is indeed spread by smaller aerosol particles, then the two-metre radius becomes much less relevant, and we would need to ask a wider range of people to self-isolate. I had assumed that this was part of the purpose of bubbles, but they seem to be largely overlooked by those staffing the helpline.
It would be better for entire bubbles to isolate
To turn to education, it is easy to see why there is reluctance to send entire bubbles home. Students have already had an extended period out of school and we want to avoid them missing more. We cannot create a school environment which is completely safe, so we have to tolerate a level of risk and at some point, learning has to come first.
The problem is that I do not think the mixed economy of teaching most students in school while a minority self-isolate at home does put learning first.
Since teachers cannot be expected to plan two different lessons, the main approaches to providing work for those at home tend to involve either posting the resources online with some instructions, or recording/live streaming the lesson. Let’s not pretend that the former provides a great educational diet for absent students. Meanwhile, the latter risks a sub-optimal experience for those who remain in school, as teachers may have to alter the lesson to make it more amenable to video, adapt what they do in the classroom, and may be inhibited by the invisible audience.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that, in a secondary setting, I suspect we would be able to deliver a better education if we asked the whole bubble to self-isolate and moved entirely to remote learning with them for a couple of weeks. Teachers could then devote all their energy to making excellent online provision, putting into practice everything they learned during lockdown.
Since they would not have to care for their own children at home, they would be available in school to deliver content and respond to students in real-time as required.
The fact that this would also be a more certain way of safeguarding health makes me think we could have our cake and eat it on this issue.
After all, under the current circumstances school leaders could do with all the cake they can get.
Jonathan Mountstevens is deputy headteacher and chartered teacher programme lead at Beaumont School in Hertfordshire
