UK minister plans post-pandemic schools shake-up

Schools could be ordered to introduce a five-term year or longer school days to make up for lost time during the pandemic, education secretary Gavin Williamson said as children in England prepared to return to their classrooms on Monday.

However, education leaders warned such measures risked distracting from less headline-grabbing but more effective catch-up interventions, such as improvements in teaching.

Williamson said in an interview on Sunday that he wanted a “transformative” reform to the system in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, which forced the closure of schools and the adoption of remote learning for most pupils.

He said that attempts to help children catch up on their learning could be an opportunity for galvanising the education system, comparing it with the 1944 Education Act that sought to remove inequalities among schools.

But Amanda Spielman, head of Ofsted, the school inspection body, warned ministers to be cautious about a shake-up of school days. She told Sky News that while it was important for children to “get their full ration of schooling” the government should not rush into changes to children’s schedules.

“I think one of the really important things is to learn from the experiments that have happened in the past,” she said. “There’s no point adding time here, or moving time there, if you don’t get a groundswell of support.”

Spielman said that the five-term school year had been piloted in the past without success. “I don’t think many of those have persisted. I don’t know the reasons why, but I think it’s really important to learn, to make sure that people understand why they haven’t been a longstanding success in the past.”

Schools were closed nine weeks ago, on January 4, as cases of coronavirus mounted after Christmas — prompting the third national lockdown by prime minister Boris Johnson.

Williamson has appointed a new education recovery commissioner, Sir Kevan Collins, to carry out a shake-up of the school calendar to enable left-behind pupils to catch up on their learning.

Collins has made clear that catch-up is a long-term project, which could take at least five years and will involve “radical” changes to the curriculum, and new measures such as improved training for teachers, greater parent involvement or the support of workplaces and universities.

Williamson said on Sunday that Collins would leave “no stone unturned” in his review. “It’s a whole range of different proposals that we’re looking at — whether it’s a five-term year, whether it’s lengthening the school day,” Williamson told Sky News.

Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, a union, pointed to government-backed research by the Education Endowment Foundation which shows high-quality teaching methods such as improving feedback made the biggest difference for pupils, while measures such as extending the school day were expensive and had only minimal impact. 

“There is a case for learning lessons from the pandemic — about the shape of the school year and our labyrinthine examination system. But that’s a matter for the future,” Barton said. 

“Right now we should avoid being distracted by gimmicky wheezes and celebrate what is about to happen, as teachers and other staff weave their distinctive classroom magic as they welcome back the nation’s children and young people.”

The reopening of schools is the first step in Johnson’s “road map” out of lockdown, which should lead to full normalisation by late June.

Children at secondary schools in England will initially have to wear masks in classrooms as well as corridors, although that policy will be reviewed at Easter.

While unions have welcomed the safety measure, it may be difficult to enforce. Spielman said she hoped the mask requirement would end in April.

Dr Susan Hopkins, the strategic response director for Covid-19 at Public Health England, told the BBC that regular testing of pupils to find asymptomatic cases should help to keep the R reproduction rate of Covid-19 at a low level.

Ministers are providing rapid lateral flow devices to secondary school children, producing an on-site result within 30 minutes. Yet a recent poll by Teacher Tapp, a daily polling app, found 60 per cent of teachers still felt “somewhat” or “very” unsafe returning to schools on Monday.