Covid-19: Educational Settings

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Wednesday 6 January.

“With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement regarding schools in national lockdown.

The last thing any Education Secretary wants to do is announce that schools will close, and this is not a decision that the Government ever wanted to take. I would like to reassure everyone that our schools have not suddenly become unsafe, but limiting the number of people who attend them is essential when the Covid rates are climbing as they are now. We must curb the escalating cases of Covid throughout the country and prevent the National Health Service from being overwhelmed. That is why, today, I am setting out the contingency plans I had prepared but had hoped would never have to implement. I would like to thank all of our teachers, our education staff and our social workers for all that they have been doing to keep children and young people safe and learning.

During the lockdown, early years settings remain open nationally to all, providing vital early education and childcare. Schools will be open too for vulnerable children and the children of critical workers. Those at university will predominantly study online, although there are a small number of exceptions, including those studying medicine, healthcare and education.

Unwelcome though this latest lockdown is—and I am very conscious of the real challenges that parents are facing with their children at home—we are far better placed to cope with it than we were last March. We are now better prepared to deliver online learning. This is an important step forward in supporting children to make the progress with their education that they so desperately need. We will also do what we can to help their parents, and I thank all those parents and carers who are having to step up once more to take on the challenge of home learning.

We have set out clear, legally binding requirements for schools to provide high-quality remote education. This is mandatory for all state-funded schools and will be enforced by Ofsted. We expect schools to provide between three and five hours of teaching a day, depending on the child’s age. If parents feel their child’s school is not providing suitable remote education, they should first raise their concerns with the teacher or head teacher, and, failing that, report the matter to Ofsted. Ofsted will inspect schools of any grade where it has serious concerns about the quality of remote education being provided.

We have significantly stepped up the digital support we are providing to schools and parents. The fantastic Oak National Academy continues to provide video lessons for all ages across all subjects, and yesterday the BBC announced it will be delivering the biggest push on education in its history, bringing 14 weeks of educational programmes and lessons to every household in the country.

Our delivery of laptops and tablets continues apace: we have purchased more than 1 million laptops and tablets and have already delivered more than 560,000 of them to schools and local authorities. With an extra 100,000 being distributed this week alone, by the end of next week, we will have delivered three-quarters of a million devices. We are also working with all the UK’s leading mobile network operators to provide free data for key educational sites. We are grateful to EE, 3, Tesco Mobile, Smarty, Sky Mobile, Virgin Mobile, O2 and Vodafone for supporting this offer. We have also been delivering 4G routers to families who need to access the internet.

Another area where we have learned lessons is exams. Last year, all four nations of the United Kingdom found that their arrangements for awarding grades did not deliver what they needed, with the painful impact felt by students and their parents. Although exams are the fairest way we have of assessing what a student knows, the impact of the pandemic means that it is not possible to have these exams this year. I can confirm that GCSE, A-level and AS-level exams will not go ahead this summer.

This year, we will put our trust in teachers rather than algorithms. My department and Ofqual had already worked up a range of contingency options. While the details will need to be fine-tuned in consultation with Ofqual, the exam boards and teaching representative organisations, I can confirm now that I wish to use a form of teacher-assessed grades, with training and support provided to ensure that these are awarded fairly and consistently across the country.

I know that students and staff have worked hard to prepare for the January exams and assessments of vocational and technical qualifications, and we want to allow schools and colleges to continue these assessments where they judge it is right to do so. No college should feel pressured to offer these, and we will ensure that all students are able to progress fairly, just as we will with VTQs in the summer.

I know that, understandably, there is concern about free school meals. We will provide extra funding to support schools to provide food parcels or meals to eligible children. Where schools cannot offer food parcels or use local solutions, we will ensure that a national voucher scheme is in place, so that every eligible child can access free school meals while their school remains closed.

Finally, I would like to turn to our programme of testing for the virus. There has been a brilliant, concerted effort in secondary schools and colleges to deliver testing for the start of this term, and none of the work done to roll that out is going to be wasted. Regular testing will take place of staff and students in school and in due course help us to reopen schools as soon as possible. Testing is going to be the centre of our plans to send children back to school, back to the classroom and back to college as soon as possible.

I never wanted to be in a position where we had to close schools again. Schools should always have their gates open, welcoming children and being at the heart of their community. The moment that the virus permits, all our children will be back in school with their teachers and friends. But until then we have put in place the measures we need to make sure that they continue to progress. For that reason, I commend this Statement to the House.”

My Lords, we are here today because of the latest in a long line of government U-turns on education, often just days after a denial that any such change of policy would happen. As an avid reader of Schools Week, I imagine the Minister will have been somewhat embarrassed by Monday’s edition which, under the headline “The back-to-school debacle: a week of blundering U-turns”, outlined a total of five in the previous six days alone. That will take some beating, although I do not doubt that the Government are up to that challenge.

The Statement is welcome, although it poses a number of questions, the first of which is why there is no plan B for exams ready and waiting. It is hardly a surprise that we find ourselves in this position, and there is an urgent need to avoid a repeat of the intolerable situation in which so many young people and their parents found themselves last year—a fiasco that dragged on into August. On the replacement for school and college exams, when does the Minister expect that the alternative arrangements will be announced? There is a need for speed to confirm what the alternative arrangements are for allocating final grades; anything other than a short delay cannot be acceptable.

I pay tribute to everyone who has made it possible to keep pupils learning online: school leaders, teachers and support staff, plus of course parents, who are having to cope as best they can with home schooling, often while juggling childcare or employment. It is essential that every pupil who is not in school be able to continue their education, and the Statement says that the Government are “better placed” to deliver online learning than they were last year. That remains to be seen. The Government need to adopt a plan to get every child online and every school enabled to deliver the necessary digital support. Despite the number of laptops already rolled out, Ofqual has said that as many as 1.75 million children still do not have access to a device. Will the DfE be redeploying officials to help identify those children and ensure that their technical support needs are met?