David Blunkett, the former education secretary, today accused teaching unions of ‘working against the interests of children’ after they told members not to engage with the Government on its plans to reopen schools in June.
Lord Blunkett, who served in the role from 1997 to 2001, said ministers and teachers needed to work together to figure out how to get children safely back into the classroom as soon as possible.
He warned it is the least well-off in society who will be worst affected by the continued coronavirus shutdown of education institutions.
He said reopening schools is a ‘matter of risk’ and that teachers will likely have to accept that in the same way that supermarket staff and care workers have.
The Labour peer said he was ‘deeply critical’ of the National Education Union (NEU) which has told its members not to work with the Government on its planning for reopening schools from June 1.
Lord Blunkett (right) today accused teaching unions including Mary Bousted (head of the NEU, left) of acting against the best interests of pupils.
Across Europe schools have returned with social distancing rules in place. Children are pictured in ‘isolation sections’ in France
Which other nations have reopened their schools amid Covid-19?
Pictured: A classroom in Morges, Switzerland
Schools in Switzerland reopened this, with many teachers splitting classes in half. Attendance has been trimmed to just two days a week per group to accommodate the change.
Denmark became the first European country to resume after a month-long closure, with nursery and primary classes opening on April 15.
In France, around 85 per cent of schools are set to reopen from this week. There will be a maximum of 14 students per class in primary schools and 10 in pre-schools.
Spain’s students are mostly set to return to schools in September, with children under six whose parents cannot work from home resuming classes on May 25.
Classrooms in Italy will also not reopen until September, though the government is considering opening nurseries and daycares before the summer.
Outside of Europe, schools in South Korea reopened to students in mid-April after weeks of closure.
But Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU, today defended the union’s stance as she suggested it would not support reopening until it is persuaded there is only a low risk of children spreading the disease.
Boris Johnson announced in his address to the nation on Sunday that he wanted primary schools to begin a phased reopening ‘at the earliest by June 1’.
The phased plan would see reception, Year One and Year Six pupils return first with the rest joining them later. Secondary schools are not expected to reopen before the summer holidays.
The Government and unions are increasingly at odds with each other over the plan with the latter questioning how pupils can safely return in just a matter of weeks.
Ms Bousted told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme that the NEU had not ‘ordered’ members not to engage with ministers but ‘we can advise them’.
A number of European countries have now reopened their schools. Ms Bousted was told this morning that it does not sound as if the NEU is doing everything it can to get children back into classrooms.
She replied: ‘Listen, if we could say that children can go back into class and there is a low or a reasonable risk that they will not go into school, will not infect each other, will not infect the staff in school and will not go home and infect their parents and their relatives then it would be wonderful, wouldn’t it, if schools could reopen because that is what we all want to happen.’
Lord Blunkett savaged the NEU’s approach as he told the same programme minutes later that ‘we have all got to work together to get over fear as well as dealing with the genuine risk’.
‘I am being deeply critical of the attitude,’ he said. ‘It is about how can we work together to make it work as safely – we can’t 100 per cent – as safely as possible.
‘Anyone who works against that in my view is working against the interests of children.’
Lord Blunkett said other professions had accepted a level of risk in performing their jobs as he suggested teachers will have to do the same.
He said: ‘In the end this is a matter of risk. We know, I am just stating this as a fact, we know that children transmit the disease less than adults, they are less likely to get it and therefore they are less likely to be a risk.
‘When teachers and tens of thousands of really good teachers have been doing what they have been doing and they have been shopping and thanking the people on the counters in supermarkets and shops or they have got parents who are being cared for by those carers in those harms, they thank them and they know they are taking a risk.
Finnish teenagers have also returned to school and are pictured practicing social distancing
Schools have also returned successfully in Denmark, where the youngest pupils have been back for a month
‘I know that in asking teachers from the 1st of June very carefully with the best possible advice, with risk assessment, with cleaning, with testing, to go back and start teaching those children, that has to be in the best interest of the most disadvantaged in our country who will not have tutors to be able to recover, who will not have parent who had higher education, who will rely entirely on us getting back to normal as quickly as possible.’
Teachers and pupils have been reliant on online learning during the coronavirus lockdown.
But Lord Blunkett said the current situation means many children are not receiving any tuition and that will have long term implications if it is allowed to continue.
‘The children of the highly-educated, of the well-off, of the better-informed have been getting some form of education over the last few weeks,’ he said.
‘The children that are most disadvantaged, and it is only one in seven of the most vulnerable children are actually getting educated.
‘We have got a vast swathe of youngsters with varying degrees of online teaching.
‘Some children actually getting nothing, some teachers really pulling themselves out to make this work and to be there for the children and other schools which are not.
‘If we are not clear about this it is the children and the future that we will let down.’
Ms Bousted said the NEU’s members had done a ‘huge amount’ to support online learning during the outbreak.
But she was put under pressure over the union’s decision to advise teachers to limit online teaching.
‘We said that you should be very careful about online teaching from your own home, in your own home, there are dangers there,’ she said.
‘We didn’t say you shouldn’t do it we said you have to be careful about it. You should use the school’s resources.’
A group of education unions yesterday urged the Government to ‘step back’ from its June 1 reopening plan.
In a joint statement, the AEP, GMB, NAHT, NASUWT, NEU, NSEAD, Prospect, Unison and Unite unions said: ‘We all want schools to reopen, but that should only happen when it is safe to do so.
‘The Government is showing a lack of understanding about the dangers of the spread of coronavirus within schools, and outwards from schools to parents, sibling and relatives, and to the wider community.’
The unions said they wanted ministers to ‘work with us to create the conditions for a safe return to schools’.