Children, families, and teachers up and down the country will be deeply saddened at the prospect of significant additional time out of school. Throughout this crisis, school staff have worked tirelessly to provide a safe learning environment for all pupils and to maintain safe staffing levels despite unprecedented pressures. Sadly, efforts to curtail the spread of COVID whilst keeping schools open have not succeeded, and for the second time in 12 months, schools will have to close their doors for all but a small minority of children. 

The evidence clearly shows that the best place for children to learn is in school. Despite the heroic efforts of many schools to provide the very best quality remote learning, the curriculum has been patchy at best and too many teachers have been given almost no support in adapting to the demands of teaching online. Prior to the crisis, some schools had already invested substantially in virtual learning environments, whilst others had no experience of working in this way. As a result, there has been huge variation in the capability of schools to respond, and in the least equipped schools, children and parents have been left to navigate home learning with limited support.   

There should be greater focus on pooling resources between schools, so that those who are already well equipped to provide learning online can provide support to other schools that are struggling. This is particularly important for smaller schools in high infection areas which are not already part of a successful Multi Academy Trust. Groups of schools could be convened at a local level to share best practice and build a more robust curriculum, enabling teachers to focus on building relationships with the children who need them most.     

One of the cruel ironies of COVID is that it’s often the children who most need school stability who have already faced multiple periods of time away from their teachers. A report by the National Foundation for Education Research (NFER) this week showed that disadvantaged children had lost out on an average of three months of learning by the end of the summer, and that the effect had been much greater among those from disadvantaged backgrounds.  

Schools serving the most disadvantaged children are going to need significant additional resources to battle this crisis, not just now but in the years to come. They will also need full flexibility in how this is deployed so that they can meet the full range of the needs they face. An extraordinary uplift to the Pupil Premium should provide additional help to schools who are serving the greatest need and give our school leaders the autonomy to deploy funds for maximum effect.