Education Committee
Oral evidence: The impact of Covid-19 on education and children's services, HC 254
Wednesday 17 June 2020
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 17 June 2020.
Members present: Robert Halfon (Chair); Apsana Begum; Jonathan Gullis; Tom Hunt; Dr Caroline Johnson; Kim Johnson; David Johnston; Ian Mearns; David Simmonds; Christian Wakeford.
Questions 527 - 627
I: Dr Patrick Roach, General Secretary, NASUWT; Julie McCulloch, Director of Policy, ASCL; Jon Richards, National Secretary, Education, UNISON; and Dr Mary Bousted, Joint General Secretary, NEU.
II: Leora Cruddas, Chief Executive Officer, Confederation of Schools Trusts; Unity Howard, Director, New Schools Network; and Councillor Judith Blake CBE, Chair of the Children and Young People Board, Local Government Association.
Written evidence from witnesses:
– [Add names of witnesses and hyperlink to submissions]
Examination of witnesses
Witnesses: Dr Patrick Roach, Julie McCulloch, Jon Richards and Dr Mary Bousted.
Q527 Chair: Good morning, everybody. Thank you very much for coming to our Committee today. For the benefit of the tape and those watching online, could we have your names and your titles, please?
Dr Bousted: I am Dr Mary Bousted. I am Joint General Secretary of the National Education Union.
Julie McCulloch: I am Julie McCulloch, Director of Policy at the Association of School and College Leaders.
Jon Richards: I am Jon Richards. I am National Secretary for Education, Local Government, Police and Justice for UNISON.
Dr Roach: Good morning. I am Dr Patrick Roach, General Secretary, NASUWT, The Teachers’ Union.
Q528 Chair: Thank you. We have four of you and it is quite difficult to do this on a broadcast, so could you be as concise as possible in your responses? We have a lot to get through and quite a lot of questions from myself and other members.
According to a group of EU Education Ministers, as of 18 May 2020, schools had opened in 22 EU countries. France has opened roughly 40,000 primary and nursery schools. The evidence on the lockdown’s negative effect on disadvantaged pupils is getting more and more alarming. We know that 4 million pupils may not have had regular contact with teachers, according to serious studies, and that over 2 million children are not doing homework. Do you accept that it is impossible to reduce the risk of infection to zero when reopening schools? Are you all right if we call you by your first names? Thank you.
Dr Bousted: Yes, of course it is impossible to reduce any risk to zero. You have a risk when you go out of the house, you have a risk when you cross the road. The aim of the National Education Union has never been to reduce the risk to zero. It has been to find out what the risk is and then work to minimise that. That has not been easy because it has been very difficult to get answers about the modelling of the risk in schools and the Government’s modelling, not only in schools but schools to communities. For example, we had to issue a pre-judicial review letter to the Government to get them to respond to us about their modelling of the incidence of the risk, particularly for staff. Of course, you can’t have no risk but you have to minimise the risk, and that has been the National Education Union’s aim.
Q529 Chair: Before I ask the others to answer, perhaps they can answer both my questions. What is an acceptable threshold of risk? Are the numbers in France acceptable?
Dr Roach: The reality is that we have to look at this in the context of a public health crisis and that is the position of NASUWT. We have a public health crisis that led the Government to close schools in the first place, and any decisions around the reopening have to be set in that context. Of course you can’t have zero risk, but you have to identify what those risks are and what the control factors are in respect of dealing with the risks. It has not been helpful that the Government have not been clear about how schools should go about the process of identifying risks and mitigating those risks as part of a wider school reopening plan. It is not a question of either you reopen schools or you don’t. It is a question of how you do so and how you can do so safely for the children and young people attending schools and the staff working in schools, but also for the contribution to the wider public health concern.
Jon Richards: It is also not true that it is the same risk to all. We know that there are certain risk categories and groups of workers who face higher risk: black workers, older workers, those who come from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds. What we know is that support staff who work in schools generally overall have higher risk, have more people. For instance, because the Government keep statistics for teaching staff, we know that about 15% of teachers are in black and minority ethnic groups, whereas for support staff among our members—and we can’t say wider because the Department does not keep statistics—about 30% come from that group. The risk assessment needs to take the individual characteristics more into account and the danger is that we are not doing that. A blanket risk assessment is being done. As Patrick said, we know from certain areas that there are higher risks in, say, the north-west than there are in London at the moment.
Julie McCulloch: I agree with colleagues. Of course there can never be zero risk and our members accept that. What has been problematic is the lack of clarity around the interpretation of the public health advice and how that has flowed through into the advice for schools. We can only operate within the parameters of public health. That is absolutely the right way for school leaders to be operating here.
To build on what some of my colleagues have said, it has not always been clear in the large amounts of guidance that have been provided for school, where schools are being asked to take particular actions, whether that is for public health reasons or for reasons to do with education or the economy, both of which are also important. To enable school leaders to be able to plan effectively, they need to know what the parameters are within which they are able to operate as safely as possible.
Q530 Chair: What I am asking all of you is what the acceptable threshold of risk is as far as you are concerned. Are the numbers in France acceptable to you all?
Dr Bousted: I don’t think that is a question we can answer. We are not epidemiologists, we are not biologists, we are not public health experts. I was on a Zoom meeting yesterday with a member of Independent SAGE who was saying that the risk of going from 2-metre to 1-metre social distancing increased the risk of transmission twice. We are not public health experts. We have to look at the evidence and all we have ever done is say: what is the evidence? On the evidence from around the world, it is difficult to make international comparisons because countries reacted very differently to the management and suppression of the virus. If you are going to say, “Let’s look at Denmark”, Denmark locked down much earlier, has had a much lower rate per head of—
Q531 Chair: No, I was talking about France specifically, which has opened 40,000 schools.
Dr Bousted: France acted much earlier in the lockdown and when it opened schools there was a much lower incidence of the virus in the community. You are not making a comparison of like with like because we have had a much higher incidence per million of population and we have had a much higher death rate.
Dr Roach: To follow on from that, we have to look at this in context and, of course, we can make some of those comparisons internationally. We can also make comparisons, by the way, domestically with what is happening in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But the reality is that the science and the scientific advice have to lead the process in relation to reopening. This is a public health crisis, at the end of the day.
One of the other interesting things that I think the Committee needs to be considering is the extent to which Government have worked with the profession and with representatives of the teaching profession in respect of plans for both closing and wider reopening. Countries that have had the greatest success have been those that have worked collaboratively with the profession as well as being driven by the scientific advice. Unfortunately, that has not been in quite as much evidence, certainly in England at least.
Q532 David Simmonds: I wanted to pick up on what Mary was saying about talking to Independent SAGE and following scientific advice. My understanding of Independent SAGE is that it is a group of self-appointed people who have set themselves up because they disagree with the scientists who are on the SAGE group. Once the Government, who are ultimately responsible for this, have made a decision, it seems clear to me it is then the responsibility of all the professionals in the sector to get on with making that happen and get the schools reopened. I don’t think it is okay to say that on the one hand teachers, union leaders or any of us as Members of Parliament are—[Inaudible.]—second guess the decisions of the epidemiologists whose profession it is to advise the Government and make those decisions. The schools should be open.
Chair: Mary, the question was specifically asked to you.
Dr Bousted: I am afraid, David, that won’t quite do. Let us look at what SAGE has said. This is not Independent SAGE, it is SAGE, and it has said that while the evidence is clear, that there is high confidence in the evidence that if children get Covid they don’t get it badly, but there is low confidence in the evidence about whether children transmit Covid to adults and to the wider communities. When the DfE’s own chief analyst gave evidence—not to this Select Committee, it was a Joint Select Committee—and was asked could schools become vectors for Covid, he said, “Well, possibly, it depends on the size of the school”. We are not cherry picking evidence here. We are trying to find where the evidence is and we are trying to use it, but you also have to remember that the unions have a job to represent our membership, to make the argument for them and to challenge Government when we feel that they are not giving us clear advice.
It took us to do a pre-judicial review letter to get the DfE to send a letter back saying about the evidence and the modelling. It was in that letter that the issue about the heightened risk to black staff was first mentioned and that school leaders should be sensitive to the heightened risk to black staff. We would have been very happy to work collaboratively and closely with the Government, as they have done in Scotland and Denmark, to plan an ordered and safe return to schools following the public health advice. But when the Government have not given information, have not produced the modelling and only did so under the threat of a judicial review letter, we have to challenge that. We live in a democracy. We don’t live in a dictatorship.
Q533 Chair: You talked about the risks to your members and to children. I mentioned about the 4 million children not doing homework. In the last few days we have had a number of psychologists and mental health professionals writing about the increased vulnerabilities of children, mental health issues, being at home safeguarding issues, exposed to online harms, joining county gangs. There is quite a lot of worry out there about the development of these children who are not learning. At what point does the risk to children’s educational futures start to outweigh the immediate health risk posed by the virus? Are you weighing up these risks to the children who are at home not learning and suffering enormously?
Dr Roach: The question is an important one, but the question is even more important for Government because the reality is that Government have made the decision to close schools and Government need to take responsibility for decisions around reopening. Of course, it is absolutely right to recognise the delicate balance that needs to be struck between those public health concerns and that health and safety concern but also children’s right to education. We absolutely support the arguments in favour of children’s right to education. The best place for children is going to be in school and it is vitally important we can reopen schools as quickly as possible when it is safe to do so.
Q534 Chair: Can you give a specific answer to the question that I asked? I know you say the Government should have done more and, yes, perhaps they should have done, but what I am specifically asking you is: at what point does the risk to children’s educational futures, their mental health, their safeguarding, start to outweigh the immediate health risk posed by the virus? You must have looked at this. Perhaps Julie or Jon would like to come in on this.
Julie McCulloch: I am happy to come in on that. I agree with what Patrick said there. We have to balance the two risks but I am not sure it is helpful to put them in opposition. Clearly, what we all want is for children and staff to be as safe as they possibly can and for children to be receiving the highest possible quality of education. The way in which those two risks are balanced is bound to change over time as the virus changes and progresses in different ways.
To pick up slightly on David’s question as well, we can only follow the evidence that has been presented to us by the scientists, together with an individual risk assessment in every establishment about whether in their own setting they can follow the protective guidance measures that the Government have produced. I think in every case we have to be looking at that balance between the public health risk and the education risk, and every establishment is balancing those two things to the best of their abilities in order to deliver on both safety and education. I don’t think we can put them in opposition.
Q535 Chair: I have a few more questions and then I will be bringing in my colleagues. You know that Teacher Tapp conducted a survey of secondary school staff ahead of the Government’s plan for secondary schools to reopen, and 10% of secondary staff said their schools had already returned, 71% of state secondary staff thought their school would open as per the Government’s plan, 14% said they were waiting until a later date, and 5% said they were undecided. What explains the different views by schools regarding reopening? Is it fair to say that some schools have been more proactive than others?
Jon Richards: We have been having discussions with multi-academy trusts at national level and at local level and we are working with individual schools and also with local councils. Clearly, as I mentioned earlier, there is a difference in the famous R rate across the country. You will find that there are areas in the north that are taking a slower path than elsewhere. What is also interesting is that some multi-academy trusts are taking different approaches. In some places they will not open in some of those areas and in other places they are.
I think it is worth noting that in some areas where they have opened there have still been cases. For instance, there was one particular case with a multi-academy trust in Northampton where we told them there was a local outbreak and that the hospitals were reporting significant increases, yet one of the multi-academy trusts still chose to open their schools there and we had a couple of outbreaks. I think the actual balance is also present at a local and a national level, but we are getting stuck in and getting involved in those discussions with academies at national and local level.
Q536 Chair: Let me put it this way. How many schools agree with the stance taken by, for example, NASUWT in that the five tests should be met before opening to more pupils? How many schools want to go further than the Government’s current plan and reopen to more pupils now? How many?
Dr Bousted: I don’t know how many but I can give an example. This is an area where the Government’s guidance, which has been woeful, has proved to be more woeful. I have an e-mail from a head teacher of a secondary school saying to the local regional schools commissioner, “I have done all the plans for opening for year 10 and year 12, I have got all the issues in place. I would like to offer a face-to-face meeting with the other year groups before the end of term. Is that possible?” There is a reply from the regional schools commissioner saying, “I am afraid this time the expectation is clear that the offer is for vulnerable children and the children of critical workers” and then—
Q537 Chair: There will be instances in certain schools, but this doesn’t answer the question. What I am trying to understand is do you believe that schools that are reopening and may not be necessarily following the five tests set by the NASUWT, for example, are mismanaging things or should they be open and is that a good thing?
Dr Bousted: Well, I think I am answering the question. I think the question was this head was saying, “I would like to be proactive” and was told by the Government they couldn’t be proactive. Then a new guidance was issued two days ago saying, “If you can, get more children back”, this head teacher having e-mailed the parents of year 9, year 8 and year 7 to say, “No, we can’t have face-to-face meetings because we are not allowed to and I have been informed by the regional schools commissioner”.
Q538 Chair: But are schools wrong to open if they don’t accept the five tests set by the NASUWT?
Dr Bousted: The tests were set by the NEU.
Q539 Chair: And the NASUWT; am I right or not?
Dr Roach: I am grateful to Mary for clearing up that misunderstanding.
Q540 Chair: Okay. Are schools right to open if they don’t follow your five tests?
Dr Roach: I will answer that question, but just to be clear for the record, the NASUWT has never set five tests that schools must satisfy before reopening. What we have said to Government is that there are five conditions that they need to demonstrate around the safe reopening of schools.
But are schools right to reopen? Of course they are right to reopen when the conditions are right and where health and safety can be satisfied. Let’s bear in mind that since 23 March schools have been open. Schools have been providing education, care and support for vulnerable children and children of key workers who have been attending school in that period of time. We are absolutely supportive of that. We are also supportive of those schools where they have engaged with their workforce, where it has been possible to reopen safely for them to do so. It is not safe opening of schools if it puts lives at risk.
Q541 Chair: Let me look at your five conditions that are not five tests. You say, “Government needs to demonstrate that its decisions in respect to schools are led by scientific evidence and advice and address the concerns of teachers and those working in schools and colleges”. As has just been highlighted by my colleague David Simmonds, the scientific evidence is often disputed. Each side can find something to build an argument on. You say, “to address the concerns of teachers and those working in schools and colleges”. That is very vague and easy to interpret quite broadly. You say that teachers are guaranteed the same protections as other workers. What other workers? Are you talking about workers in Primark, when every Primark is open in the country? Context surely is important and you can’t compare with nurses, for example, working in very highly dangerous conditions in hospitals. What is the context when you say teachers are guaranteed the same protection as other workers?
Dr Roach: I am happy to answer that. What we are talking about is health and safety protections under law. That is what we are talking about. We are not talking about access to, for example, surgical face masks. That is not what we are saying, so we don’t want to be misrepresented. What we are saying is that in the context of a public health crisis and in the context of ensuring health and safety in workplaces, it is vitally important that there are clear standards in relation to the expectations about what is safe return, a return to a Covid-secure school, in the words of the Prime Minister, what a Covid-secure school will look like. That is all that we are insisting upon and that is all that our members have been—
Q542 Chair: What is the threshold at which it would be deemed acceptable to return according to the risk assessments? You say, “Robust Covid-19 risk assessments to be undertaken”. What is the threshold at which it would be deemed acceptable to return according to risk assessments?
Dr Roach: A risk assessment, as you will know, is a process, and it is a process of engagement, understanding the context, the nature of risk and what that risk might present to individuals within that workplace. It is understanding mitigation measures. These are all important issues in a policy or any Covid security plan for a school or, indeed, any other workplace.
Q543 Chair: Why is it that children and parents can have access to Primark over the next few months but many of them won’t have access to schools, according to your risk assessments?
Dr Bousted: The risk assessments are based on the DfE guidance, so the risk assessments follow the guidance that the DfE issue for primary schools, for secondary schools and for post-16 establishments. It is those risks that we turned into our checklist and have gone through with our members. If you have a quarrel with the risk assessments that have been done in schools, that is a quarrel and an issue you should take up with the DfE on whose guidance our risk assessments are based.
Q544 Chair: How realistic is it that all your five conditions or tests, however you want to define them, can be met in full? Julie, would you like to say something?
Julie McCulloch: I think what school leaders have been doing is taking the guidance from the Government, as Mary has said. That is what they have been told is as safe as possible a way in which they can open their schools at the moment. The individual risk assessments that schools have been doing have taken that guidance as their starting point and layered on to that the contextual issues that they have to take on board in their schools, whether that is to do with the number of teachers they have who may be required to shield, for example, which would limit the number of staff that could come in. They have tried to be aware of the particular challenges where they have large numbers of teachers and pupils from the BAME community where the guidance has been much less clear. They have tried to recognise the challenges on their own individual sites, sizes of classrooms, all that sort of thing, while trying to maintain some form of social distancing and following the protective measures. Where schools have been risk assessing they have been bringing those two things together, the Government guidance and their own context.
From our survey of members in secondary schools that are opening this week—we know that about 90% of secondary schools have opened this week, the majority of those bringing back all eligible pupils—I think the vast majority of school leaders have taken the Government guidance, done what they possibly can in order to bring back as many pupils as possible while remaining within the parameters of that guidance.
Q545 Chair: I have one final question and you can answer it, Jon, and if you would answer both together. Several of you, the unions, refer to the idea that they need more time to plan before opening to more pupils. On 9 June, Mary said, “The Government’s social distancing rules made it impossible for primary schools to admit all pupils before the summer holidays. Primary schools and secondary schools will not reopen to all pupils until September at the earliest”. In the absence of some big change such as vaccine, some of the fundamental barriers will still be in place then. Is there a good time to go back as far as you are concerned?
Dr Bousted: We want schools to open as quickly as possible and we have produced an education recovery plan. The problem we have in England in particular is that we have some of the highest pupil/teacher ratios, we have more pupils in classes and the footprint on the classes is smaller. If you are going to continue with social distancing the pressure it puts on the school site is very great. That is why we said we need to look at an education recovery plan and we need to look, as we have done in Scotland and as they did in Denmark, at using other public buildings in order to increase the footprint of education establishments to allow more pupils back to school.
Q546 Chair: You said clearly that primary schools will not reopen to all pupils until September. What will change in September? If the Government’s social distancing rules are still in place, are still the same, what then? Do you just carry on with what you said about keeping schools closed to some pupils or not?
Dr Bousted: As we said in our plan, you plan more inventively. First you look to increase the physical footprints of schools and, secondly, you look at plans for blended learning—and this needs to be a national plan—so that you have support for a tiny school, and a tiny school for vulnerable and disadvantaged children should be a priority, and then support—
Q547 Chair: Are you saying primary schools and secondary schools should be open? You said primary schools and secondary schools will not reopen to all pupils until September. Is that still the case or not?
Dr Bousted: The Government announced that. The Government have said for the primary schools not all children will go back before the summer term.
Q548 Chair: No, you said, “The Government’s social distancing rules made it impossible for primary schools to admit all pupils before the summer holidays”. Then you said, “Primary schools and secondary schools will not reopen to all pupils until September at the earliest”. That was on 9 June, so only last week. What I am trying to clarify finally is what is going to change in September if the Government’s social distancing rules are still the same. Do you still hold with that, that primary schools and secondary schools will not reopen to all pupils until September at the earliest? Do you hold with your comments that you made on 9 June?
Dr Bousted: If the Government do not change their social distancing rules they can’t, so that is why we need to look at an education recovery plan that is focused on more than school buildings. The NEU has one about increasing the physical footprint of the school, increasing the numbers of teachers available to teach smaller classes and a national plan for blended learning. What we need is a plan, as Justine Greening has said consistently, and as you said, Robert.
Q549 Chair: Could the other members respond to that? Should schools open in September?
Jon Richards: Can I chip in? Picking up from what Julie said before, it is clear we have been working closely with schools, and a lot of schools and academies and multi-academy trusts have been building the checklist we have drawn up into their risk assessments. I don’t think there is an issue between us and progress towards that. I am hoping that we will be able to open as many schools as we can in September but, as Mary said, it will depend to an extent on what the Government say.
I think there are lots of other issues that the Government are not thinking about and it is only in the last two weeks that support staff unions have started to get ministerial meetings. While the Government have had some dialogue with the teacher unions—they will comment on what level of engagement they have had—we have not had anything at all, yet we are talking about serious issues such as cleaning, school meals, all those areas, which have not so far been taken into account. I am quite happy to talk about those later on, but the Government are very focused on teaching and curriculum, and that is absolutely understandable, but to get those places into being you have to have facilities set up and that takes quite a lot of planning.
Q550 Chair: Anyone else, Patrick and Julie?
Dr Roach: In answer to that, it is important that we understand and plan and prepare for readiness for September, whatever September looks like.
Q551 Chair: Should schools open in September?
Dr Roach: Schools should open as quickly as possible. We have been very clear about that. I have been very clear about that with you this morning. Schools are already open to a greater or lesser degree. We want to see more of that but we also want to see clarity from Government about what the expectations are of what schooling will look like from September.
Julie McCulloch: If it is at all possible and considered safe, absolutely we want all children to be back in school from September. That is by far the best solution but, as colleagues have said, we are not able to do that at the moment within the Government’s own protective measures guidance. The maths just doesn’t work. If you can have only up to 15 children in a class and you are bringing back all children, you need twice as many classrooms and twice as many teachers. There are conversations we can have about how we might be able to have more space and increase the teaching workforce, but neither of those are straight forward. The best measure, the best outcome if the science says that this is safe and appropriate, is to have all children back with some of those measures relaxed in September, but I don’t think we are in a position to be able to say whether that will be safe or not.
Q552 Dr Caroline Johnson: I have a couple of questions to pick up on some things that Dr Roach said. You talked about the risk and the Chair asked you about the absolute risk. As the scientists come through with the number of people in the population that have the coronavirus and the number of people in each area that have or may have the coronavirus, we get an idea of the absolute risk. We know the risk of being within 2 metres is a 2.5% chance of infection. Do you have a figure in your head that you are looking for? Obviously, you want the risk to be as low as possible but you recognise that is not and can never be, and indeed never was, a zero because there have always been transmittable diseases about that have been transmitted in schools. What risk would you look at? Would you look at a one in 100 or one in 1,000 or one in 10,000 or one in a million? What sort of level of risk do you think is an acceptable risk for your teachers to take?
Dr Roach: Again, I am not going to second guess the scientific evidence and scientific advice on this.
Q553 Dr Caroline Johnson: But the scientific advice will tell you what the risk is and may be able to quantify it within a range. What range is acceptable to you is the question I am asking.
Dr Roach: I am not going to second guess scientific advice. Scientific advice is not just about the range in relation to the risk of virus transmission. It is also about whether or not in the context of wider relaxation plans in relation to lockdown it is safe to reopen schools and to what extent it is safe to reopen schools. What we are saying is that Government need to be driven by that scientific advice and Government also need to consult with the profession, with the workforce in schools, to understand how schools can reopen safely within any constraints that the Government are responsible for imposing.
Q554 Dr Caroline Johnson: But it is the Government’s responsibility and the Government should be led by the science and the Government have SAGE, the scientific advisers, providing this advice on which basis they have decided that schools can reopen to certain groups. Bearing in mind that you have described it as the Government’s responsibility or based on the science advice, and you have accepted that the SAGE committee are experts in their field, why have the unions added their own tests, accepting what Dr Mary said earlier that you are not epidemiologists or scientists, by and large?
Dr Roach: Just to be clear, we have not added our own tests. What we have said is that Government need to demonstrate when it is safe for schools to reopen.
Q555 Dr Caroline Johnson: They have done, haven’t they? They have said, “We have had all the best scientists in from all around the country, we have called them SAGE in a big group together. They have sat down and they have worked out that it is safe to bring these pupils in”. Why not just open the schools and let them in?
Dr Roach: Indeed, that is a question I am sure that you will be putting to Government Ministers but, as you will know, the Government have not required schools to reopen. The Government have announced that it is permissible for schools to reopen but the Government have not required it. The Government are not even requiring parents to send children to school at the present time.
Q556 Dr Caroline Johnson: Do you support that?
Dr Roach: There are some questions. I think we are all agreed that it is vitally important that children return to school as quickly as it is possible and safe to do so, there is absolutely no doubt about that. What we are saying—
Q557 Dr Caroline Johnson: If schools have been told that it is permissible for them to open, because it is safe enough for them to open and that they can open, why would you support any school that is not open?
Dr Roach: What we are saying is that schools need to take account of the issues in relation to the health and safety of their workforce. They have always had to do that. This is a new risk that presents itself in the context of schools’ wider reopening and schools have to take account of that risk through risk assessment planning and consultation with their workforce. That is perfectly in keeping with the legislation that already exists in relation to the management of risks of whatever nature. Of course, individual schools have to look at their own circumstances within a national framework of what is expected or, indeed, what is required for schools to do, but at the moment we have permitted expectation that schools might reopen, we have guidance that schools may wish to consider how they reopen and how they reopen safely. Of course, we have a responsibility as a trade union to ensure that our members’ health, safety and wellbeing is not put at risk.
Q558 Christian Wakeford: We have had some of the other unions reporting that the continued status quo for schools has been a great success. To what extent do we think that approach is beneficial for anyone wanting to get children back to school? If I remember correctly, I think it was Jo Grady from the UCU who said, “We have seen other education unions succeed recently in their impressive public campaign to prevent full reopening of primary schools”. That can’t be beneficial to anyone. What is your view on that particular approach?
Dr Bousted: We really can’t comment on the statement of another union leader who is not a leader involved in schools. The campaign has never been to prevent the full reopening of primary schools or secondary schools. It has been to have a safe reopening. Some of the line of the questioning here seems to be that it is the fault of schools and teachers and leaders for following Government guidance. It is the Government themselves who said last week that all primary schools would not be reopening to all pupils. There are huge concerns, we know from discussions with DfE officials, about secondary schools, largely about the increased use of public transport to and from schools and overloading that and the dangers of that for social distancing. The Government have a review into social distancing, which has bypassed SAGE, which is a different group, and they will produce evidence on that as well. It seems that the line of questioning has been as though the science is in some way negotiable, and it simply isn’t.
Q559 Christian Wakeford: I think on that particular point it is yourselves and, in particular, the NEU who have been trying to suggest that the science is negotiable by imposing your own tests and going against the advice of the DfE’s chief scientific adviser who said it was safe for the reopening of schools to continue.
Dr Bousted: The DfE’s chief scientific adviser said that he had not read the guidance, that it had not been checked with Public Health England, that it would be checked with Public Health England, that they had low confidence in the key question of to what extent children transmit the virus, and that there was a potential for schools to be vectors for Covid-19. He didn’t know how much and he thought about the size of the school. It was not just us; it was a whole load of people who felt that that was rather alarming.
Jon Richards: We have been working with people. The Government told everyone to stay at home. Large numbers of our staff were asked to stay at home. They were prepared to come back but they wanted some idea about security and to know they would be safe, so we raised legitimate questions with the Department for Education to try to answer those questions. It is perfectly legitimate for us to ask on behalf of the support staff and the schooling staff to say, “People are concerned about this. We want to be assured of this risk assessment and they would wish us to do so”. That is what we have been rightly doing. We had a chance to question the scientists and it was clear the scientists were also not certain. People on this Committee appear to be suggesting there is this huge certainty, and certainly at the meeting I was at the scientists were not saying these things that people seem to be assuming. We want people to get back to school but we have been asking legitimate questions.
Q560 David Johnston: My question is to Mary because I think she is the only one who made this statement but I am happy to be corrected on that. In a press release last month you said, “Normal education is currently suspended and teachers should not be teaching a full timetable, or routinely marking work”. At a time of this national crisis, and let’s suppose we accept your safety arguments, the only prospect for children to be getting learning at the moment—if we accept that parents are not the best people to do that, that the professionals are best—is from their teachers and online learning. Could you explain to the Committee why you said that and what exactly a reasonable workload would be for teachers at this time?
Dr Bousted: What I was emphasising then was with the schools being closed we had to look at new ways of working and teachers have done that incredibly. The fact of the matter is online learning is important but it is not a panacea. We know that 700,000 children have no access to the internet, so online learning is not available for them. Many teachers in state schools have had to use other methods of creating work for them and helping them to learn. The NEU has developed a micro site for parents and carers with creative activities to support learning at home.
We did a survey of our members and we found that 97% of secondary teachers have set work for classes online using resources provided by a range of providers, 26% of primary teachers and 20% of secondary teachers sent or took work to students’ homes, but many of them have had real problems with the technology, either the technology not working or children not accessing the technology. The other issue about online learning is it is very difficult to know what children have learnt. The Open University says it takes 100 hours to get one very good hour of online learning.
Chair: Does anyone else want to comment on that? David Johnston, you want to come back presumably, don’t you?
Q561 David Johnston: Yes, because I accept the limitations of online learning and the access to digital learning. I completely accept that, but what your statement is about is teachers should not be expected to teach a full timetable and they should not be expected to routinely mark work. It is not really about the digital gap. It is about saying to schools, let’s say we accept the safety argument, “We don’t want you at school but we also don’t want you online teaching and marking work”.
Dr Bousted: No, that is not the case at all. What I was saying there was you need a new approach to education and the fact of the matter is that many teachers have been teaching in school and then preparing online learning for their classes and working extremely hard in order to do that. What we needed from Government in order to support that was a much better offer on digital learning. We needed those children without access to the internet to be provided with laptops, and the laptop scheme to provide all children with laptops has been perilously poor. I was talking to one local authority officer who said that they spent three days trying to work out which children were going to get the 56 laptops that had been given to one local authority.
We need a national plan because the point is the restrictions and the constraints that Covid poses now, we don’t know what is going to happen in the future, we don’t know about a second wave, so we need to look—
Q562 Chair: Okay. I would like to bring in some other witnesses as well, please. Would anyone else like to comment on that?
Dr Roach: Just to make the point that teachers, from the outset of this crisis, have risen to the challenge of supporting children’s learning. Frankly, we support and commend our members who have been doing that, and that includes those teachers and support staff who have supported vulnerable children and children of key workers within schools, but also the generality of teachers who are supporting the generality of children and young people who are unable to be in school. That has had an impact, without a doubt it has had an impact, because we have seen, according to our surveys, the workloads of teachers increasing. The question is how sustainable that can be in the longer run and it is absolutely right, if schooling continues to be disrupted, to look at alternative approaches to delivering quality education to young people. There is no doubt that teachers are doing the job.
Q563 Chair: Okay. Julie, you wanted to say something, briefly, please.
Julie McCulloch: I wanted to pick up, if I could briefly, please, the point about laptops. This is absolutely crucial. I think it has been close to a national scandal over this term that we have had such a large number of young people who have not had access to technology at home. We know that technology, as others have said, is not a panacea, but in order for children to learn successfully over this long period that they have been out of school—which may continue beyond this, so this is a future issue as well as a current one—and be able to have any chance of keeping up they need to have access to the technologies that they need to do that. We know that there has been a scheme to get laptops out to some disadvantaged year 10 pupils, but that is a tiny proportion of the children who don’t have access to technology. We need to do better on that.
Q564 Chair: Thank you. Jon, briefly?
Jon Richards: I think there is a discussion to be had, which we want to have with the Department, about the role of teaching assistants at this time. A lot of teachers are at home, working from home, helping people online and doing those things, so there are a lot of teaching assistants in bubbles. Previously, you had high-level teaching assistants cover supervisors, who were skilled and trained at covering under the direction of teachers. There are now, worryingly, some people who are younger, who have less experience, who are not trained, being asked to take bubbles. We would be really keen to talk to the Department about that.
Chair: David Johnston, are you finished?
David Johnston: I will just make a final point that laptops didn’t appear anywhere in that statement. I accept there is an issue there but that is a distraction from discouraging people to teach a full timetable or mark work.
Q565 Jonathan Gullis: I have never been so frustrated in my entire life sitting in this Committee listening to what has been said. As someone who spent eight years in the teaching profession, Dr Roach, I have had nothing but the utmost respect for you for my entire career. I joined the NASUWT, became a school trade union rep, and yet I am sorry to say these five conditions are effectively five tests. As for the NEU running a political campaign, which came to all MPs’ inboxes, to basically make sure schools did not open I just think is utterly disgraceful. David Blunkett and Alan Johnson, Labour MPs back in their day—Alan Johnson was Secretary of State for Education—said the unions have got this wrong.
I had an e-mail from the NEU to its members on 11 May saying that based on the fact that the information they had from Government was not good enough, in their opinion, that staff were not to engage with any planning based on the wider opening of schools and, “If your head asks if you will be available for wider working after 1 June, we urge you to reply that you are awaiting further advice from your union”.
A union’s job is to protect staff’s health and safety, but it is also the job of a union rep and unions to come to the table and speak with the Department for Education and head teachers. For the unions to say to staff to not engage with their schools at all, as David Johnston said, means what is not going on? What support has not been given to kids that could have been given? I am absolutely outraged at the sheer damage the unions have done to the teaching profession and I think there are a lot of questions to answer in this regard. Teachers have worked incredibly hard and they have been unbelievable, but the unions have acted—I am sorry—in a way that is not in the interest of working with people.
I would like to know, first of all, did the NEU or NASUWT or any other union engage with local authorities that said they were refusing to open up schools? I want to know, hands down, did you advise those local authorities to not open up? I also want to know, going back to Caroline’s question, how have the unions—you have admitted yourselves that you are not scientific experts—come up with your own tests or conditions or whatever you want to call it? How does that ever end up working in the interests of the children?
Dr Roach: I am sure I respect the right of members of the Committee to have their views, but I would seriously challenge members of the Committee to ensure that their views are rooted in the evidence of what unions are actually saying. For the record, the NASUWT has not been engaged in any campaign to keep schools closed. What we have been engaged in is work with Government, with local authorities, with individual employers, whether that is multi-academy trusts or whatever, to ensure the safe return of children to learning as quickly as it is possible to do so. That is our role, that is our responsibility to our members, and I think that is absolutely the right thing for us to be doing.
Q566 Jonathan Gullis: I am sorry, Dr Roach, if that is the case why is it that every time I see a teacher union on TV they are saying, “Schools aren’t safe to open, schools aren’t safe to open”? A campaign has been run, whether you like it or not, to breathe fear into parents about the idea of sending their kids back to school. While I appreciate the NASUWT has not done a specific campaign, whether you like it or not it has come across to parents that these schools are death traps, and that is just not the case. There are thousands of children not getting an education.
Dr Roach: I think you accept that we have not been running such a campaign and I would defy the Committee to show me where we have sought to give parents that view. We are concerned not only about the safety and welfare of our members but also the safety and welfare of children and young people. But as I have said, children and young people have been in schools since the Government announced the closure of schools and our members have been supporting those children. We want to see that encouraged, we want to see that continue and we want to see that grow where it is safe to do so.
Q567 Chair: Can we bring in some other members, please? Julie, do you have anything to say?
Julie McCulloch: ASCL certainly has not been running any sort of campaign to suggest that schools should remain closed. Schools have been open throughout this process. Our members have been keen to bring back as many children as they possibly can, and one of our roles has been liaising between school leaders and Government so that Government understand the questions, the challenges and often the desires of school leaders: what do they want to do? Often they have wanted to go further in bringing back more children and in different ways. One of our roles has been to liaise with Government to say, “If a school wishes to reopen or open more widely in this way, would that be considered safe to do so?”
I think from our perspective more often the conversation has been schools wanting to do something but wanting the reassurance that that is within the protective measures guidance that the Government have set out.
Jon Richards: Sometimes we have been forced to go on television to defend situations where the Government have announced something that we knew nothing about. We have been asked hostile questions, a bit like Jonathan just asked, about situations where the Government announced something the night before. As I said, what we do is raise legitimate questions. We didn’t know when the Government announced they were going to open on 1 June. We were not warned about this, yet if you talk to my colleagues who work with the general union, our colleagues working in the NHS, they have worked hand in hand with the Government. They have had social partnership forums at which planning and discussion has been happening from the very start. We have not had that for support staff. In primary schools 56% of staff are support staff, yet we have had very little engagement at ministerial level and we have certainly not had things like planning. We have been invited to make contributions and put letters in, so eventually, because the guidance didn’t even take support staff into account, we had to write to the Minister.
Q568 Jonathan Gullis: Jon, the schools were told to open up on 24 May, if I am not mistaken. How is it that you were not told in advance? On 24 May, if my recollection is correct, the Prime Minister said schools were opening from 1 June, so how is that you not knowing in advance?
Jon Richards: But that is not a lot of time, 24 May to 1 June, to do a whole load of planning, absolutely. Had the Government talked to us all the way in, if we had had the whole of March to discuss, which we have done, we could have been discussing with the Government about that but they didn’t discuss it with us. Why not?
Dr Bousted: One of those weeks was over half term. On the thing about “don’t engage”, we got the announcement about schools reopening and we said to our members, “Don’t engage yet. We have no guidance from the Government about how this is to be done”. When the guidance was produced on the Tuesday, it took us two days to do our checklist, based on the DfE guidance, and then we said to reps, “Go in and engage about a safe reopening”. The “don’t engage” was in the absence of any Government guidance about how this was to be done because we had no guidelines on which to make that engagement.
Q569 Jonathan Gullis: Mary, I would like to know still from the NEU, did you work with local authorities to keep them down at any stage?
Dr Bousted: No.
Q570 Jonathan Gullis: Not at all? I have had lots of councils quoting the five tests of the NEU, so therefore your five tests have been hijacked for political reasons and then blocking kids coming back to school. Whether you like or not, you need to address that.
Dr Bousted: Listen, our five tests are perfectly reasonable. They are perfectly reasonable. They are based on the science: much lower cases of Covid-19, a national plan for social distancing, testing, contact tracing, whole school strategy if Covid breaks out in a school and protection.
Chair: We know the five tests. There is no time to read them all out. As I go back I don’t understand why one of your tests or conditions—because one of you is saying it is conditions and not tests—didn’t include the risk to vulnerable children staying at home, the 4 million who have little contact with teachers, the 2.5 million who are not doing any work and suffering safeguard issues.
Q571 Tom Hunt: I am going to pick up on a few points that have been raised to delve into more detail. First, I believe that the Chair was very reasonable to use the example of France. My understanding is that around 40,000 establishments have opened up and there are 70 new Covid cases linked to that. That is an incredibly small number. On it not being appropriate to make a like-for-like comparison, my understanding is that in France they have a 1-metre social distancing rule and it is actually 2 metres in the UK, which might make it the case that it could even be lower in the UK.
My main point is in regard to what Jonathan was raising and it is a question for Patrick. The perception that many people have in this country, whether rightly or wrongly, and it is a reality, sadly, is that some of the teaching unions have actively obstructed the reopening of schools ahead of September. That is how they feel and, frankly, you can’t blame them, Patrick, when you made a comment—I read a newspaper story on 7 May where you are directly quoted as saying that the Government should rule out any phased reopening of schools ahead of September. You said, “In view of the continued and pressing public health challenges and the considerable task that would be required to ensure that every school is ready to admit increased numbers of children and adults into safe learning and working environments, the NASUWT urges ministers to act to end speculation on the reopening of schools beyond the current restrictions prior to September 2020”.
Back in May you are pretty much ruling out any reopening of schools ahead of September, yet you expect us to believe that you have been positive, proactive, constructive and looking to do everything you can to get as many kids as possible back to school ahead of September. Do you reflect upon and understand why so many people feel as though teaching unions have been obstructive and that has had a negative impact on many children?
My final question, because I have been waiting a while, is to do with online learning and it has been touched upon by one of my colleagues already. Frankly, some of the statements and the quotes I have seen from the NEU—it may well be that that was not your intention—were perceived by me and others as actively discouraging online learning. I appreciate it is not the same as regular learning but it is a lot better than just simply relying on learning packs. The data we have seen from the Sutton Trust says that children from disadvantaged backgrounds are much less likely to get online contact every day. Are you concerned that there are many private schools where they are driving incredibly high levels of attendance every day, roll calls 90%, engaging online learning every day, and the disparity with children from disadvantaged backgrounds? Does that concern you and what do you think should be done about it?
Chair: There is a lot of questions in that but I am going to ask you all to answer very briefly.
Dr Bousted: The NEU was never against online learning. What we guided our members about was online Zoom lessons. Indeed, a report in The Times last week said that those were not secure and there have been some very unfortunate safeguarding issues because of online Zoom lessons. We issued guidance to our members about how to do online learning safely, so we have been completely misrepresented there.
Yes, we are very concerned about disadvantaged children and vulnerable children and our members have worked extremely hard to try to contact those children but there are huge difficulties. The difficulty for many of those children is they live in overcrowded households. They don’t have access to laptops. Their parents may be very stressed. They may be hungry. They may be undergoing a huge amount of trauma themselves. Our members have visited homes, have done weekly phone calls to try to talk to those children. They have done everything they can because schools know the most vulnerable and the most disadvantaged children and they know how important education is to them. That has been—
Q572 Chair: I need you to be as concise as possible because I have to bring in three other witnesses. Julie, please?
Julie McCulloch: If it is acceptable, Chair, I will just answer the third question because I am not sure the first two were directed at me. There is absolutely huge concern about the disparity in experience between different children. To some extent there is an issue there of an independent/state divide, but I think there are many state schools that are providing excellent support as well. On what we might do about that, I think that recognition of the different family circumstances is important and there is not a one-size-fits-all solution here. What is important is that individual schools understand the communities in which they operate and what the barriers to learning among their more vulnerable children might be and how to overcome them. They have the understanding of that. What they don’t have, necessarily, is the resources to be able to deliver what we need for those families to be able to engage as much as possible with learning. I will not repeat the laptop point.
Jon Richards: I do not think those questions were aimed at me, but I wanted to come here to talk about some of the planning and issues that we have to come over the next few months. There are some big issues about catering, about how we deal with some of the kitchens that we have. I want to talk about cleaning, about how we deal and plan with cleaning over the summer for when we get back into the schools in September. There are big issues about careers. A lot of young people are going to go out and are going to be leaving soon or be leaving next year, and our careers members have some real concerns about how those people are going to cope in the new economic world. I have not had the chance to do that.
Chair: We are going to come on to these kinds of questions.
Dr Roach: The first bit of the question, if I may refer to it in that sense, referred to a quote from me, and I stand by that quote about ending speculation. It would have been much more helpful than not for the Government to have been clear about what their intentions were around the return of schools and to be signalling that quite clearly. There was a huge amount of speculation that is creating unprecedented levels of anxiety, not just among the school workforce but within parents and wider communities as well, but we are certainly not about blocking reopening.
On online learning, I absolutely take the point that Tom has raised in relation to those disparities. That is one of the reasons why we have been very, very clear from the get-go with the Government that they needed to have a plan in relation to providing an infrastructure to ensure that no child was left behind, that every child could access the learning offer from schools during the closure of schools.
Finally, in relation to how we build a resilient system, there is a need for a recovery plan for our education system that does recognise that there are huge challenges for many schools in the state sector in supporting children’s learning, particularly those children who are from vulnerable backgrounds or disadvantaged backgrounds. It is vitally important that the Government set out what their plans are and how they intend to support schools to support those children even more.
Q573 Tom Hunt: Back in May, that quote that you made, Patrick, by saying the Government should end speculation and, therefore, any attempts to get any kids back before September, yet at the same time you expect us to believe that your union has been constructive in trying to find a way to get children back before September, that is very difficult for people to swallow.
Dr Roach: I beg to disagree, with the greatest of respect. Indeed, my communications with the Secretary of State have been very clear about how you can create the conditions for the safe return of children to schools. Arbitrary dates do not help. What we need is a clear process, a clear plan, where teachers working in schools, and the wider community, can get behind what has been started.
Q574 Dr Caroline Johnson: My question goes back to what Mary said to David about marking and online learning. I think we would all agree, witnesses and all the Committee, that we all want to see every child getting a good education and we all understand that education is very valuable, particularly for more disadvantaged children.
However, I have a number of constituents whose parents have seen differences within the state sector, within the same schools, in what is provided by teachers. In one particular case that I have spoken to this Committee about before, there are two sisters in the same family who are receiving entirely different levels of education. We have seen the NEU advice not to provide online teaching and that teachers should not be expected to mark—
Dr Bousted: No, that is not—
Dr Caroline Johnson: Let me finish—used by some as a reason for it. I am wondering whether the unions would support a minimum standard provision and whether or not, as well as looking at how to get children back into school and what the five tests should be for people to go back or not, any of the unions have looked at five minimum levels of provisions or five things that teachers should be doing, and how to support their members in delivering a good quality education so that the variation between children is not quite so stark in terms of their provision and positively writing to schools and encouraging them to mark work.
Dr Bousted: Minimum levels of provision is an interesting idea. That is why we have done our national education recovery plan, because what that asks of Government is to put the resources in so that we can have more consistent approaches that will serve disadvantaged children and—
Dr Caroline Johnson: This is not about money, this is about different work.
Dr Bousted: It is about money, because if you are going to do that and you are going to enable poor children to access learning, particularly online learning, then we need investment in an infrastructure that enables—
Q575 Dr Caroline Johnson: The question was not about access, the question was about provision between two different teachers who may even be working at the same school, with the same access to resource and money.
Dr Bousted: I would say that schools have been working in extraordinary circumstances in new ways. Teachers have had to learn to use online platforms very quickly. Sometimes the technology does not work. It is true that there has not been an absolute plan of consistency. Thinking about that at a time when essentially schools were closed on the Friday, then opened on the Monday for children of key workers and vulnerable children, it would be inevitable that there would then be a variety of offers to the children working at home. I do think more consistency would be useful, but we need national leadership for that and a plan and an infrastructure that allows that to happen.
Chair: Caroline, I want to bring in Kim, who has not had a question yet. I will bring you back later, Caroline, sorry.
Q576 Kim Johnson: We are in the middle of a national pandemic. Over 40,000 people have died and we are dealing with high levels of poverty and inequality in this country in comparison to others. Many schools were struggling prior to this pandemic due to 10 years of austerity. We do have a disproportionate number of black frontline staff being affected. Can you explain what measures schools have been taking to mitigate this and what health and safety and risk assessments are undertaken to ensure that black staff are not unduly affected?
Jon Richards: We have been clear in the advice we have given to schools and to support staff that they should be subject to individual risk assessment. I said earlier that we identified that about twice as many support staff come from black backgrounds, are black staff. Therefore, we have said that particularly because we know there is an extra risk there. We also know from older workers and from disadvantaged workers. Support staff disproportionately within this workforce come from there.
What we did was we asked at the SAGE meeting, when we met with the scientists, if they could provide us with statistics for this group of staff. Unfortunately, they cannot. The Department for Education also does not publish—I do not know if they have them—statistics for this group of workers. Our main thing we have been saying to schools is, “You need to do individual risk assessments where there are clearly—[Inaudible.]
I was speaking this morning with a cleaner on Facebook, and what we saw was they worked as a midday supervisor where they had had an individual risk assessment because they were clinically vulnerable, but the private company they worked for, for which they did cleaning later on—and a lot of support staff have more than one job—had not done that risk assessment.
Dr Roach: I am grateful for the question because the observation that lies behind it is extremely important to the Committee, I know. We have a considerable amount of evidence of disparities in relation to the treatment not only of BAME teachers and other staff but also the impact that this is having in respect of concerns among the profession and, indeed, among parents and communities about the race equality impact around both school closure and reopening plans. While we will be urging and continue to urge schools to be clear about the equality impact of their reopening plans, we are also very concerned that the Government have not really come clean in relation to the equality impact of its announcements in relation to schools reopening.
We are saying the Government need to be transparent, they need to publish their own equality impact assessments to give the sector greater confidence as it begins to prepare for wider reopening, not just this term but of course from September onwards, because schools are very concerned not to be doing the wrong thing, which could be catastrophic and risk the lives of BAME staff in schools and also of children and the communities to which they belong.
Dr Bousted: We are receiving from our black members great concern about their own risks going back on the school site, and percentages of them feeling that these risks are not understood well enough and are not being managed well enough in individual schools. Patrick is absolutely right. We need to have the Government’s own equality impact assessment about reopening schools, given what we know from the Fenton report about the increased risk to black staff, particularly black staff with other comorbidities, in relation to white staff of the same age and the same comorbidities. We need that risk assessment.
The other thing we are saying is if you are vulnerable there is plenty of work to be done away from the school site at the moment, supporting children who are learning at home. The protection of vulnerable staff is really key.
Q577 Kim Johnson: Does the panel believe that the Government need to be very clear about what guidance, because the panel has alluded to the fact that guidance has not been clear and straightforward from the Government from the beginning?
Chair: Thank you. Can I bring in Apsana and if you can answer both Kim and Apsana’s questions together?
Apsana Begum: To follow up from what Kim has asked, we know that lots of research has shown previously that in terms of child poverty Bangladeshi and Pakistani children are the most affected by child poverty. Yesterday there were debates and decisions made about food poverty, but that is one angle; we are talking about child poverty overall. Do you think the Government need to do more to look at specific ethnic groups and make specific recommendations for those children and staff from those backgrounds?
Julie McCulloch: The first question around clearer advice for schools in how to support BAME colleagues and pupils, absolutely. What school leaders are trying to do is draw on the advice we have had so far from the Government—the Fenton report and elsewhere—advice from the Health and Safety Executive, advice from organisations such as BAME education, which is doing really good work in this area. They are trying to bring all of that together, as Jon said, to undertake individual risk assessments for individual staff in those categories and thinking about pupils as well. Yes, doing so in the absence of very clear Government advice on that.
The second question around child poverty for particular groups, absolutely. One of the major issues that this crisis has exposed is the extent of inequality, sometimes hidden inequality, between different groups of children, which in individual schools teachers will have been very aware of, but it has not always, I do not think, been brought to the fore in a national conversation. I am sure many things need to be learned through this crisis, but one of those absolutely is what the different needs are, particularly around poverty, for children in different groups. That cannot all be solved by schools. Schools play a huge role in that, but it is also about all the other public services that have to wrap around those families.
Chair: Patrick, if you could be really concise, thank you.
Dr Roach: I will be very concise. On the BAME guidance, absolutely that is essential. The Government have not published guidance for schools that is going to support schools in this particular context. I come back to the issue of EIAs, equality impact assessments. Those are absolutely essential and the Government have to come clean on that.
On the issues of child poverty, I absolutely agree we have to recognise and the Government need to recognise, too, the impact of poverty and ethnicity as two factors working together, impacting on children’s access to learning and their progress and life chances. It is regrettable that the Government have not come forward with a plan to address those issues head on to ensure that, for example, Bangladeshi children have access to learning opportunities and are supported in that while schools remain closed. It is vitally important that we are seeing that positive action from Government, led by Government, supporting the work and the efforts of schools.
Q578 Apsana Begum: To come back very quickly, the point is also if you look at the Public Health England report, finally published, it talks about social inequalities, but it talks about racism and that is not being discussed enough and there has not been any statement from the Government yet. I want to know a bit more about what your thoughts are on that.
Chair: Patrick and Mary, can you give Apsana a couple of sentence answers?
Dr Roach: As I said, that is acute and those disparities are linked to racism. There is absolutely no doubt about that. Racial inequality, both within our schools but also within the system as a whole, is impacting on children’s lives. One of the things we are saying very clearly is that black lives matter also in education. We need, therefore, a very clear plan, a very clear recovery plan, that is going to support those children and ensure that those children do not get left behind as a result of this crisis.
Dr Bousted: The recommendations from the Lammy report, from the Windrush report and from the Timpson report must be implemented. I do not think we need another inquiry. We know all that we need to know at the moment about the corrosive effects of racism and poverty on the nation’s children. In an average class of 30, nine children, on average, will be poor. Those children, if they are black, are also going to suffer from racism and that compounds the inequalities they suffer. As a society we have known that. What Covid-19 has only done is revealed to us the extent of that disadvantage.
It has been very interesting, Robert, and very heartening to hear you talking so much about the disadvantage gap and about the issues for poor children in school and about their access to learning, but these issues have only been highlighted by Covid-19. They have been underlying and they have been there and they are getting worse, because the numbers of children in poverty—and they will disproportionately, for their percentage of the population, be black children—is increasing.
Chair: Thank you. I am going to bring in Ian and then Jonathan Gullis briefly. Ian, please take your time.
Q579 Ian Mearns: To try to get some context here, we must remember that in different parts of the country there are huge differentials in the incidence of Covid-19 in the population. School leaders, all staff and all parents must be confident that it is safe to completely reopen schools. The thing is this is not being discussed in some sort of educational bubble that surrounds schools alone, but it is in the much wider context of over 40,000 fatalities and daily briefings live on TV, with people receiving those daily briefings in the context of hugely disrupted lives and many of them in significant job uncertainty. It is no surprise to me that it is not as a result of any massive national campaigns by teachers or other professionals in schools. People are uncertain in their own lives about the whole result of Covid-19.
From that perspective, I would like to come on to what is guiding the thinking about the reopening of schools and ask the panel what in their view is the quality, quantity and the timing of the information, advice and guidance that they have been getting from the Department for Education. Julie, you were nodding your head.
Julie McCulloch: Thank you for that question; I am very happy to answer that. This feels like my lived experience for the last three months. There has been an enormous amount of guidance that has come out of Government here. It has been a full-time job for me and a team of specialists at our school to try to keep on top of that advice. We put out daily newsletters to our members and every day for the last three months there have been on average two or three changes to guidance that we have had to flag up to members, so the quantity has been enormous.
The challenge has been it has been very piecemeal and it has lacked a sense of an overall strategic plan and coherence. We will get an announcement via the Sunday newspapers that something is going to change. That will be followed up by an announcement from perhaps the Prime Minister or the Secretary of State. Then the civil servants will be left to try to put together some detail around those announcements so that schools can actually make sense of them. That is what leaders have been getting.
What they have needed and will continue to need is a clear rationale for the decisions that they have to take, clarity around the parameters within which they have been able to operate and clarity around, when they are being asked to do something, what is the reason they are being asked to do that—is it public health, is it education, is it the economy—and what flexibility is there for them to take that guidance and make it work in their own contexts. If I could give a very quick example of that to flesh that out, the issue is—
Chair: Very quick, please, because we are running out of time.
Julie McCulloch: —the use of rotas in primary schools. There has been a huge amount of confusion about that. The SAGE paper seemed to suggest that rotas were the safest way to bring children back. The Government guidance for primary schools says that they must not use rotas, but there has been very little explanation of why that is the case. If schools are able to plan and implement this guidance effectively, it needs to be delivered in a different way.
Jon Richards: Julie said most of what I was going to say, and probably much better and more succinctly than I would have done. I would just say there are areas of guidance that are missing. For instance, schools are being told to do deep cleans. There is no definition of what a deep clean is. When you get sent from the particular Department guidance to the cleaning, it sends you to specific cleaning around where there has been an incident, but of course that is a particular case. So there are some clear gaps that could be filled. Also responsibility of private companies compared to in-house services, there are quite some gaps there. Lots of other stuff around catering as well, but I will come back because I know we are running short of time.
Dr Roach: I would simply echo the point that Jon has just made there. It brings me to talking about the role of the Health and Safety Executive. We are not clear in that flurry of guidance that Julie referred to earlier that there has been much engagement with the Health and Safety Executive. That would have been absolutely essential and probably would have secured greater confidence among the school workforce as well as parents about safety and security in terms of the wider reopening plans.
Dr Bousted: I would like to contrast what is happening in Scotland. Scotland got a committee together for the staged reopening of schools, with public health officials, with professionals, with unions, with the Ministers, and they worked out, so it is absolutely clear when schools open, what the public health—
Q580 Chair: Just briefly, do you support, Mary, the reopening of schools in Wales, which is going to happen by the end of June, as I understand it?
Dr Bousted: We are in negotiation with the Minister about that. We have some concerns about that and about how that will work, but we are engaged with negotiations about that.
Q581 Chair: Are you in the middle or are you still deciding whether to support them or not?
Dr Bousted: No, they are engaging in negotiations and engaging in how to do that safely.
Chair: Because they have already made the decision to open the schools.
Dr Bousted: Yes, the decision was made but the lead-up to the decision—we did not know the exact decision that would be announced by the Minister in Wales, but in the lead-up to that there was very close working with the unions. We had some concerns about that decision. We are now engaging in negotiation with the Minister to negotiate about those concerns.
Q582 Ian Mearns: The ONS randomised testing sample that was announced last week showed that of the people who tested positive, two-thirds of them were asymptomatic. Given the tendency for children who might have the virus to be asymptomatic, what advice specifically have you been given for the potential of child-to-child or child-to-adult transmission of the virus? What evidence have you been presented with of that?
Dr Bousted: The SAGE evidence on that is that the confidence that SAGE has in whether and to what extent children transmit the virus is low. That is the only evidence that we have.
Q583 Ian Mearns: To Julie now, to what extent do school and college leaders feel confident moving forward with the reopening since the change in stance on the return to schools?
Julie McCulloch: As I mentioned earlier, 90% of secondary schools—primary it is slightly harder to get an exact number on—have opened this week to the eligible pupils. Many leaders opened with a sense of trepidation. They have been having to put measures in place that look very different from the way that schools normally run. Most have been delighted to have more children back on site and are reporting very positively about how children are responding to all the different protective measures that they have to put in place. We are only two weeks into primary opening and two days into secondary opening so it is early days, but reports so far have been that while there is a lot of concern still about trying to keep those safety measures in place, there are lots of things that are very difficult to do, particularly in a primary school with younger children, but there is a positive response so far. In terms of opening beyond that, I have talked about that in quite a lot of detail already in terms of what would be needed to give confidence for wider opening.
Q584 Jonathan Gullis: Apsana and Kim have done great work in promoting the fact that BAME communities obviously need a lot more support. I would like to make sure, though, we also do not forget white working class, especially boys, who we know are 40% less likely, if they are white working-class disadvantaged, to go on to higher education than a black disadvantaged boy. I would like to make sure that when we come out of this—unions, us as MPs, the Department for Education work—that we tackle disadvantage, full stop, of all races, because clearly there is a big gap. We need to look at whether university is always the right destination and, therefore, need to see apprenticeships ramped up, which is something that Robert has led tirelessly on.
I would like to ask the unions in a calmer manner—I appreciate that I have cooled off now—that we lobby for all students now to get back in September and we lobby for this 2-metre rule to go down to 1 metre, if we can get rid of it at all. We know kids learn best in a school building that has all the correct safeguarding measures in place.
Chair: Can I add to what Jonathan said in the sense that will it be still your view that your five conditions or tests have to be met before you support a full opening in September?
Dr Bousted: We think that as the number of cases go down and as the R rate goes down, the tests are increasingly being met. Contact test and tracing is not being met at the moment and that is one where there is a real concern. We hope that over the course of the next few months the Government will get that up and running and it will work. There were always templates for how you would make a broader decision to get back to school.
Jonathan is absolutely right about the issue of class. Class determines educational outcomes to a factor of 10 above anything else. Class is linked with disadvantage and poverty, but you cannot ignore the fact that racism, compounded by disadvantage—and more black children live in poverty and disadvantage—is a coefficient that ratchets up the level of poverty and the way that is experienced in children’s lives. You cannot be colour-blind to this. You have to look at each of the issues. Issues about class, issues about disadvantage, issues about poverty are absolutely key, but you also need to accept and understand that the racism compounds those inequalities in a vicious way.
Chair: Thank you. Patrick and Jon, can you give us one-sentence answers if you can, or two sentences maximum?
Jon Richards: Jonathan has made an important point about apprenticeships and there is a job of work to do about employing a significant group of career advisers and linking them into apprenticeships and FE. I think the Government should do some work over the next few months about that.
Chair: You are talking to the converted on that.
Dr Roach: On the question of lobbying, I will have to leave that to you. In the context of this crisis we are looking at the issues of health and safety of the workforce and of children particularly in schools.
On the issue of the white working class, I absolutely agree with you on the longer-term question of tackling educational disadvantage, but in the context of this crisis we have to look at those woeful disparities that exist that are racialised in terms of their impact. We have to tackle that because you have greater prospects of dying as a result of this virus if you are black and minority ethnic.
Q585 Chair: Thank you. Mary, to go back to the five tests, in your view if your five tests or conditions are not met, to be clear, will you support a full school reopening from September or not?
Dr Bousted: We will support a full school reopening when it is safe.
Q586 Chair: According to your tests. What I am asking is if your tests in your view are not met, if all of them are not met, does that mean you will not support school reopening in September?
Dr Bousted: We have put a plan together for education reopening in September, which would allow education to reopen in a way that would be safe and would meet the five tests.
Q587 Chair: If those five tests are not met, will you then oppose school reopening in September?
Dr Bousted: We will agree with an education reopening in September. We think that needs to be creative, we think it needs to be led by the Government, we think it needs to be education buildings but also other buildings. We think we need to bring more teachers in so that—
Q588 Chair: I get all that but I am just asking you about the five tests. If you do not meet the five tests, will you not support school reopening? You have been very clear that they are very important. If the Government do not meet them all, will you then oppose a full school reopening in September?
Dr Bousted: I will try to answer this question for the third time, in the way that I can answer it, which is we will support an education reopening on the lines of our education recovery plan, which will enable all children and young people to get a much better education, which will guard us against a second spike or local rises in the R rate and—
Q589 Chair: And include the five tests?
Dr Bousted: Yes, the five tests have to be met but we are proposing a way of doing education that will enable the five tests to be met in the way that we organise education.
Q590 Chair: What you are saying is if the five tests are not met, you will not support school reopening in September?
Dr Bousted: No, no, we have a national plan that will support education reopening in September, meeting our five tests, using a wider footprint than the school site and bringing back more teachers so that there can be social cohort distancing in schools along the lines of the guidance from the DfE.
Q591 Dr Caroline Johnson: I want to ask a question of Mary that I asked Dr Roach earlier on. You just said that as the R rate falls the risk reduces to staff. Of course it does. You have your five tests. Do you have an absolute level of risk that you think is tolerable to your members? There is a quantifiable risk there. What quantifiable risk is okay and what quantifiable risk is not?
Dr Bousted: We have to look at the Government guidance. Let me emphasise again we do not say there will be no risk, because that is impossible. As the level of cases in the country falls, as the R rate falls, if we continue with the measures to have social distancing, if we get a good contact testing and tracing programme in place, as the WHO has said all nations must do, if we have protection for the vulnerable, it will be much safer for schools to return. Those I think are perfectly normal, perfectly reasonable, perfectly legitimate tests for the Government.
Q592 David Johnston: We know from studies about the learning loss that happens over the summer holidays. In the US they think that the poorest children probably fall behind about three months as a result of their summer holiday. If schools were to go back in September, as the Children’s Commissioner says, it will have been six months for a lot of children. What are your union’s assessments of what the learning loss will have been in that time?
Chair: In a nutshell, please.
Julie McCulloch: It is a hugely important question. I do not think it is a question I can answer with a number. This will vary across different children. Clearly, we know children have had a very different experience over the last few months and will continue to have that over the summer. It is an issue that we believe that schools are the right people to tackle. We know there are conversations going on at the moment about summer provision and so on. Clearly, there is a role there to play in summer provision, but we think the best way to catch up is for teachers to be leading that process with children, in school if possible or remotely if that is deemed not possible.
Q593 Chair: This is a very important question that David has asked. Can I ask other witnesses to write to us with this? I think it would be more helpful to have your assessment.
Could I ask a final question? We are over time but it is a very important session. First of all, can I put on record I do recognise the enormous work that thousands of teachers, heads and support staff, who often do not get mentioned in all this, have done to try to look after children? That is incredibly important and we pay tribute as a Committee to all those people in education who have done everything possible to try to teach children of critical workers, vulnerable children and as the years go back. I put that on record and I have seen it in my own constituency of Harlow, teachers going in day after day, dropping homework around at children’s homes and so on. I recognise that.
This is not a criticism, but I have to ask the question when you see the studies come out that 4 million kids from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds have had very little contact with teaching staff and 2 and a bit million children are not doing any homework. Can I ask you genuinely why is that the case and what should we be doing about that? My huge worry underlying all my questions to you has been the state of the millions of vulnerable children who have not been getting the education they should, and the attainment levels that they will be under compared to their better-off peers when they go back to school. Can I ask that as a final question? It is not as a criticism but it is genuinely to find out the answers.
Dr Bousted: We have always thought that the priority for the return this term should have been vulnerable children and disadvantaged children. Next term we do not know what the situation will be in September, but we know that school is very important for those children, not only for contact with learning, for support of learning, but also for safeguarding. So whatever it is in September we think those children should be a priority. We were a bit surprised with particular year groups going back. We think those children should be prioritised for a place in school.
The Government did do vulnerable children but it was a rather narrow definition. Schools know which children and young people are not in any particular category but are incredibly vulnerable, and they should be given the flexibility to get those back in first.
Q594 Chair: Julie, so many, 4 million kids. If this is true, this survey as was highlighted by The Times yesterday, why is this happening?
Julie McCulloch: Certainly, all the indications we have had from our members is that they have been trying incredibly hard, particularly with this group of children, to get them into school. We have had very low numbers of vulnerable children coming into school because those families, as you mentioned earlier, have been quite scared, often. They are prioritising getting those children back into school and also doing enormous amounts to try to get work to those children, whether that is online work, whether it is delivering printed packs of materials and so on.
What we have to recognise here is the very complex and difficult home lives that many children in this category have, and how difficult it has been for them to engage with work even when very high-quality work has been set. If we are thinking about what we can do about this, there are certainly things we can do within schools. The prioritisation of bringing vulnerable children back into school is really important as well, but we cannot ignore the fact that it is incredibly difficult to learn if you are in a large family with no space to study, no access to technology to do it and parents who have been having an incredibly difficult time.
Q595 Chair: Can I reiterate the admiration from all of us, as a Committee, and thanks to all your members and support staff who have done an incredible job over this period?
Jon Richards: Thank you, Robert. I recognise that you and Ian and other colleagues on the Committee have talked up support staff, when sometimes other parts of the Government have not done. There is a huge role for teaching assistants to be played on this and there is a particular concern if we are stretching classes. If we are talking about expanding into sports halls and other places like that and we are talking about having small classes, the individual one-to-one support that teaching assistants play and the pastoral care, there is a real danger—we need to do some proper planning about how we are going to bring people back and how teaching assistants play that role. My worry is if you are expanding classes you are asking for things. Where are we going to get the funding to support that, because you are going to get more staff if you are going to expand the building? There needs to be some more work on that.
Dr Roach: The points have already been made by other colleagues, but to emphasise two, first around choice. The Government need to make the right choices and the right calls at the right time. The Government could have done better there, because this crisis is not one that we did not see coming. That preparation should have been in place. Secondly, contingency. We have spent a lot of time this morning talking about planning and preparation for September. Who knows what could happen between now and September? Supporting the disadvantaged must be a core part of that contingency plan for September, because if it is about chronological intake of children and young people into schools, that will not necessarily tick the box as far as the disadvantaged are concerned.
Chair: Thank you all for a sustained barrage of some very tough questions from members. I appreciate and thank again the work of your members at this time. We wish you all good health, and your members, and every possible safety. We are going to have a two-minute recess and we will start at 11.22 with the next session. Thank you very much, all of you.
Examination of witnesses
Witnesses: Leora Cruddas, Unity Howard and Councillor Judith Blake.
Q596 Chair: Can I welcome the next panel today? I sincerely apologise for the delay. As you can see, it was an incredibly important session and it overran. For the benefit of the tape and those watching on video, could you kindly introduce yourselves and your positions, please?
Unity Howard: Good morning. Unity Howard, Director of the New School Network. We are an education charity that believes that every child should have an equal chance to succeed in life, no matter their background. We find and support innovative and pioneering individuals and organisations to set up free schools.
Councillor Blake: I am Judith Blake. I am leader of Leeds City Council, but in this position I am the chair of the Local Government Association’s Children and Young People’s Board.
Leora Cruddas: Good morning, I am Leora Cruddas. I am the Chief Executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, which is the sector body for academies and multi-academy trusts.
Q597 Chair: I want to start off with a couple of questions before I bring in Tom Hunt. Can I direct my first questions to you, Unity, please? Can you remind us how many free schools there are at the moment, please?
Unity Howard: 508.
Q598 Chair: Of those, what has been the openings in terms of the years, both primary and secondary, the percentage that have opened as the Government have suggested?
Unity Howard: We conducted a survey last week. We do not have the specific data for secondaries that opened this year; 100% of primary free schools opened in the specified years—years 1, 6 and reception. A further third of free schools were open to other years. About 78% of the rest of free schools are planning to open before the end of the year.
Q599 Chair: What is the view of the New Schools Network in terms of the five tests set by the unions? Do you think you have to meet those before opening or will the free schools be planning to open over September as suggested by the Government?
Unity Howard: We have been quite clear that we do not think that the union should be setting additional tests on schools. Over the course of the last couple of months, the main job that I have had has been speaking to head teachers, who have been on the brink of tears at times with the additional burdens that unions have been providing. From the New Schools Network’s position, we need to open all schools for all pupils, no ifs, no buts, in September. That is going to mean a national effort being put behind education, similar to that that we have seen in health. From a free school leader’s perspective, they are used to dealing with additional challenges. They might be in slightly strange buildings or they have only been open for a couple of years, so they have been leading the way in finding innovative solutions to reopening.
Q600 Chair: We know that according to the UCL study yesterday 2.5 million children are not doing homework at all, virtually. What are the figures in terms of your pupils? Do you have the total number of pupils and do you know the figures in terms of how much contact they have had with teachers?
Unity Howard: From our survey, the free schools that responded, about 78% of pupils have completed online learning. We have seen some fantastic developments from individual free school leaders, like King’s Leadership Academy Warrington, which are offering six hours of lessons on Zoom every day, with 99% attendance. Incidentally, they saw the pandemic coming in January and put all efforts behind planning this classroom-to-cloud initiative.
Q601 Chair: What has been done for the children who do not have online access?
Unity Howard: They have ensured that all pupils have online access, either through providing dongles for those who do not have internet access, or providing laptops and iPads for those who do not have devices. The challenge is replicating that across the sector.
Q602 Chair: Thank you. Leora, the same question in terms of your schools that you represent.
Leora Cruddas: The national data is showing, as Julie McCulloch in the previous session said, around 90% of secondary schools opened this week. For primaries it is now around 70% opened this week. I would agree with Unity that there is now an urgency for pupils to return to school in September. We think that the current arrangements cannot continue indefinitely, because a prolonged absence from school is concerning academically and socially and for some children from a welfare and safety perspective, but also because the long-term impacts of a deep recession on the poorest families will be very damaging.
Q603 Chair: Do you believe that schools should reopen whether or not the union’s five tests or conditions are met or do you think they have to be met before the schools reopen?
Leora Cruddas: It is really important that leaders maintain good industrial relations with unions and, indeed, be good employers to their staff, but I do not believe that it is necessary for another organisation’s tests to be met before schools reopen.
Chair: That is very clear, thank you.
Q604 Tom Hunt: A quick question, which you have touched on briefly, about when you think it might be feasible for all schools to be open to all pupils. Secondly, other UK nations are taking slightly different approaches to reopening schools. What do you think we can learn from their approaches?
Leora Cruddas: When might it be feasible to open for all? I am hopeful that that is September. Professor Whitty, talking at the Prime Minister’s briefing last Thursday, said that the incidence, which is the number of cases, is low but not very low, in one in 1,000. He concluded by saying that the epidemic is shrinking but not fast. If the size of the epidemic continues in England to shrink in this way, it may well be possible, and of course it is very desirable, to open all schools for all pupils in September, but we would need the advice of scientists and Public Health England.
I think even in a full-return scenario, some protective measures would still be required. These protective measures could take the form of unwell staff and students staying at home, cleaning hands more often, good respiratory hygiene, cleaning frequently touched surfaces, and we will need to focus in this early period on curriculum recovery and on emotional and family support as necessary.
Q605 David Simmonds: Just a question on this issue of buildings and the ability of schools to reopen. Judith might have a particular view on the first part of the question. Do you agree that the existence of the “Building Bulletin”, BB99 and BB100 standards, will mean that for the most part schools that have been built and maintained by local authorities will generally have more space and flexibility about reopening sooner simply because that guarantees a larger size of building in schools? I am particularly thinking for free schools who may find this more challenging. I have heard from some local ones that are in old office buildings, for example, and finding this a problem. Judith, LGA, and, Unity, your organisation New Schools Network as well, what will you be doing to support schools with those kind of premises challenges to enable them to be ready to reopen as soon as possible?
Councillor Blake: Thank you. Good to talk to you again, David. You obviously have a lot of experience in this area. The whole area of space in schools is absolutely pertinent to this debate. It is why we have been very clear that a one-size-fits-all approach to the problems that we have already highlighted today is so difficult and why local authorities have individually been working with each school, coming up with an individual risk assessment. Obviously, the space and the logistics are absolutely paramount. Of course, the other element is that many of our schools are still in Victorian buildings, so even though the space requirements might not be so stringent, there are still particular issues that everyone needs to bear in mind.
One of the things that I think has not been picked up yet is that many areas are posting massive increases in the numbers of children coming into school. There is a school buildings programme that in some places has been stalled, improvements have been stalled. I urge everyone on the Committee to make sure that those building programmes get started again, otherwise we are going to be in an even more difficult position come September.
Schools are incredibly resourceful and we have been really impressed with the response we have had from each individual school in so many different circumstances. But there are technical logistical issues that I do not think, if I am honest, were considered with the announcement for June. We have to get planning now, everybody involved, all the stakeholders on the ground in local areas, getting plans in place so that we can move forward.
Q606 David Simmonds: The thrust of the question was about the support that councils and the other organisations on this panel can provide directly to schools now. I am aware my own local authorities are doing things like providing additional temporary buildings to enable more space, talking to local places like libraries about enabling classrooms there, helping to support the HR process so that staff who are vulnerable have the confidence that they need to get back in the classroom as soon as possible. I am conscious there are other organisations on the panel that provide similar levels of advice and support for schools. It would be useful to tease out the work that is already being done to address some of the concerns that we heard from the unions in the previous panel.
Councillor Blake: Obviously, from a local authority perspective, the problem that did not seem to be picked up at the beginning was halving the class size to 15, additional staff but also, of course, additional buildings. We are keen to get guidance from Government about what it is they are expecting, and an understanding of why they did not follow the scenarios and SAGE recommendations around rotas and bringing children in at different times so you could get more children seen, the teachers could have more confidence about their wellbeing, and why that was not considered in the first place. I do not have the answers to that.
If we are talking about using additional buildings, leisure centres and so on, the other big area that has not been addressed yet is the whole issue of home-to-school transport and the impact of social distancing as we are seeing on buses and trains at the moment applied to a school situation. That has not been picked up either, so there are a lot of questions.
I repeat, every area will come up with a different plan but we have to be given the wherewithal to do it at a local level and make sure that the resources and the powers are there so we can get on and make sure that we can address the needs of our children and young people going forward.
Q607 David Simmonds: Judith, I know you are a substitute member of the National Employers’ Organisation for School Teachers. Can I ask you, for the legal employer, which local authorities are for staff in maintained schools, what discussions took place with the teaching unions about what their expectations were and did that influence in any way the guidance that NEOST may have provided to local authorities, as employers, about that reopening process?
Councillor Blake: As you know, David, the officials at the LGA have been in intense discussions, as you would expect. They will have fed in all of the information that will have led to the decisions that were made coming from it. The difficulty for people in my position is that we have not been in those detailed discussions. That is why I think we need to get it right down to the local level so all of us who have a role to play in this incredibly important issue have the opportunity to assess all of the guidance coming from the different areas.
Chair: We have to be much more concise, please. We have a lot to get through.
Councillor Blake: Do not forget that local authorities have the Director of Public Health advising them as well. We must not forget that dimension coming into the decisions that have been made in local areas.
Q608 Jonathan Gullis: Two quick ones. Throughout this period the Committee has been concerned about the impact of school closures on the most disadvantaged children and what the impact of the approach to school reopening will be on them. Also, Unity, do we think this is an opportunity for a free school revolution to take place in this country?
Chair: Particularly in disadvantaged areas, I should add.
Jonathan Gullis: Stoke-on-Trent would be more than welcome, Chair, thank you.
Unity Howard: Thank you, Jonathan, yes, I am well aware of your interest in a free school in Stoke-on-Trent. We are massively concerned about the divide between a school reopening and not reopening. Just this morning there was a piece in The Telegraph about the fact that private schools were going to look to reopen, no matter what the Government guidance said, in September. We need to think critically about this. It is not just between different areas, it is also between different types of schools and which schools have the resources.
On the free schools point, I think absolutely we should be seeing a free schools revolution. We have had a growing discussion here about the challenges of reopening schools and the number of pupils in those schools, but also the massive differences in disadvantage and inequality that are in this country. We would like to see a big new wave of free schools directly focused on raising social mobility in this country in areas where there are no free schools currently and where educational outcomes and opportunity is low for pupils.
Q609 Jonathan Gullis: Judith, can I quickly come to you? I know Leeds City Council is doing tremendous work in supporting Stoke City Council with their children’s services, and thank you for that. Obviously, as leader of the council, what are you doing to prepare for what inevitably is going to be a huge amount of referrals from schools regarding safeguarding and the impact that is going to have on local authorities?
Councillor Blake: Thank you, Jonathan, that is a really important question. We have seen a massive reduction in referrals coming into social care, something like 50% at its highest. It is improving now. We are working already on the ground, reaching out, going out to make sure that we make as much contact as possible. Our concern is the children who we do not know who have got into difficulty over this period.
The real question that has not been addressed is extending the opening of schools does not automatically mean that the most vulnerable and the ones who most need it are the ones who are coming back into school. In fact, the evidence suggests otherwise. So, it is one to one. Our schools are ringing up individual families, talking to them, getting contact in where we can, but there is no question we are going to have to expand the capacity around oversight in schools, welfare support, an absolutely crucial area that we have not properly addressed yet.
Leora Cruddas: The first point I would make is I do not think there is a universal response to the pandemic, but some families are under considerably more stress. We have seen two research reports published yesterday, the IOE one, Robert, which you have cited, and also the NFER one. Importantly, the NFER report says that teachers are in regular contact with, on average, 60% of their pupils, although pupil engagement is lower in schools with highest deprivations. I would agree with Judith that we do now need to be focusing our efforts on making contact with all pupils to ensure their safety.
Q610 David Johnston: Can any of the panel put a number on the learning loss? In the US they say after the summer holidays poorest children will fall three months behind. Do you have any research that suggests quite what the impact is going to be of nearly six months and, whether or not you do, do you think it can be caught up?
Chair: Can I add to that? The DfE official said at a conference a couple of weeks ago, the one who is in charge of the pupil premium, that the attainment level could be as much as 75% difference between disadvantaged children and their better-off peers because of the lockdown. Do you recognise that figure?
Leora Cruddas: I am happy to come in first here. I think the reality is that we do not know, and are unlikely to know, until we have all pupils back in school and we can assess the learning loss and the gaps in learning. In answer to your question, can it be caught up, I believe strongly yes, it can. We know how to do this. For example, when a trust sponsors a school that has been failing, there are often very significant gaps in knowledge and in the curriculum. Trusts can and do rapidly put in place recovery curricula to ensure that those gaps in learning are made up. We know how to do this; we can do it. It is perhaps a longer-term issue. I think it is probably going to take us the next academic year with a strong focus on a recovery curriculum, but we can do this.
Unity Howard: I echo Leora’s point, this absolutely can be done, but it is a long-term thing. This cannot just happen over the summer. This needs to be about at least the next academic year. There are additional challenges in relation to the virus than there are with summer, when we are thinking about mental health and bereavement and all the other things that are layered on.
The one thing that I would say is that we need some clear direction from Government about what this looks like, with a laid-out minimum education entitlement from September next year. Schools and trusts know how to do this well, but the good ones know how to do it well where there are bigger issues with deprivation, with educational under-attainment. We may then start to look at a further worsening of the attainment gap when schools reopen.
Councillor Blake: I do not think you can describe it just in terms of learning loss. The impact on mental health, anxiety, general wellbeing is, I think, even more of a concern, if I am honest. The schools that have been reaching out and giving pastoral care to children are finding some really—I think also the thing we have not talked about enough today are the views of young people themselves. We need to make sure that we give them the opportunity to understand what has happened to them and how we can support them, so that when they come back they are ready to access the learning that is on offer.
Chair: Thank you. David, are you okay? I think your point on mental health and wellbeing is a massive one. While I am absolutely passionate about a catch-up programme, it needs to have wellbeing and mental health support and support from charities like Place2Be, for example, in the schools helping the kids. I completely agree with that. Kim, please.
Q611 Kim Johnson: Welcome, panel. My question links to mental health. The Coronavirus Act has resulted in changes to how local authority children services work with schools. They have now a reduced service and little reviews and face-to-face work, so the pandemic has resulted in greater numbers of vulnerable children and some that we do not even know of at the moment experiencing higher levels of mental ill-health. What impact has this had on how school staff support vulnerable children in this way?
Councillor Blake: It is a difficult area, Kim, so thank you for raising it. The flexibilities, some of them have been pragmatic in terms of just not being able to have the same face to face and having to make sure that we can move at pace. For example, in Leeds we had a placement that failed and we needed to get foster carers. They were just short of the final assessments and that did work well, but talking to local authorities they have been very wary of using the extra flexibilities and they are going to be temporary.
The EHCPs is a real issue that we need to address and pick up, because we have lost skilled staff. Many of our health visitors and school nurses were taken into the acute services to help with the pandemic. They are coming back, but some of them are incredibly stressed as well. What we are asking for is a longer time period, because now we are getting into a position where we are being caught up with costs and everything in terms of legal challenge for the timeliness of the plan. A focus on those areas would be very helpful to local authorities to enable us to get back up to speed. As you quite rightly say, it is not just about the children that we know; it is the ones that we will need to assess at pace when we get full access back to them.
Unity Howard: Free schools in general have reported that mental health and wellbeing is the number one concern of their pupils. Judith mentioned EHCPs. There is another angle to think about here that is alternative provision schools. I know that they have been very concerned about the newly vulnerable pupils that have been created as a result of this pandemic. I think what they found challenging is whose responsibility it is to identify those pupils now and then who works to support them later. Because of the school closure the financial position of AP schools is at risk because they do not have confirmed commissioning places for September like they normally would.
Leora Cruddas: I think there are three groups of pupils that we need to be concerned about, those that we were concerned about pre-Covid-19, those that we had some concerns about pre-Covid but we were managing, and this invisible group now that we need to be concerned about but might probably not yet know who they are. I think we need health commissioners in local authorities through probably the health and wellbeing boards to review the sufficiency of local family provision. Trusts are already doing quite a lot of work in this area. Let me give one example. The Ebor Academy Trust has created a bespoke welfare and wellbeing team alongside their safeguarding team, so this is bespoke and led by the trust safeguarding lead, and vulnerable children are being identified, for example, for nurture sessions.
Chair: It would be very helpful if you could send in more details of that to the Committee, because I think we would be interested to see how that works on a practical basis, like when a child walks into the school and so on. It would be really good if you are able to do that. Kim, any more?
Q612 Kim Johnson: No, I will go on to my next question if that is okay. During the first session panel we discussed how racism impacts negatively on black staff, particularly those in low-paid and outsourced roles. What are schools doing to mitigate this? I would also like to know how your individual organisations have been successful in recruiting and retaining black staff in senior positions.
Chair: Could you give us a couple of sentence answers each, please?
Leora Cruddas: My organisation is 20 months old. I am the only senior post-holder, so we will be doing more work in relation to BAME. Our support to our members is what has taken the focus of my time and attention during Covid-19. We know that the impact on BAME staff has been perhaps more than twice the risk of white counterparts, so we have been working hard with our member trusts to address this issue, including commissioning legal advice on this issue.
Unity Howard: In our organisation we have 22% of our board from BAME backgrounds and 10% of our permanent staff. We definitely want to go further and, like other organisations, are really listening to our BAME employees and thinking about how we can support them and increase the number within our staff. Free schools in particular have reported that they are concerned about BAME staff and pupils in their school. I think this is one area that they would benefit or all schools would benefit from more guidance from Government about how to include this in their risk assessments, because it is a real specialism that free school heads do not hold.
Chair: Kim, do you want to come back?
Kim Johnson: I want to say quickly that you do not need any additional advice on how to employ black staff. Liverpool has a really poor record. We only have 18 black teachers in the whole of our local authority. It is just about making sure that racism does not play a part, or unconscious bias.
Chair: Thank you very much. Caroline Johnson, you have a quick question, please.
Q613 Dr Caroline Johnson: During this Committee meeting I received a number of identical e-mails, so suggesting a campaign from somebody, perhaps one of the unions, asking for the baseline assessment of children when they enter school in September to be essentially abolished this year. Would you support that, or do you see the assessment of children as particularly important this year as we work out where children are relative to where they should be and where children have moved relative to their previous position, given the Covid educational challenges that we have had?
Unity Howard: Very quickly, no. We absolutely need to keep baseline assessments in to understand what the loss of learning has been and then plan for schools to recover that.
Leora Cruddas: I agree with Unity.
Councillor Blake: I would like to have this discussion with head teachers around the country to really understand what they are talking about. Assessment across the board is going to be critical next year with the loss of learning for critical year groups. I think it is a bigger issue and one that we need to take very seriously.
Q614 Tom Hunt: It is spoken about slightly. I was very reassured to know that when it comes to the predicting of grades and how SEND pupils may be impacted by that Ofqual will be thinking very carefully about how those with special educational needs may be disadvantaged by predicting of grades. I have asked questions about the Oak National Academy, whether it is dyslexic-friendly, dyspraxia-friendly and so on, but we know that SEND provision had big question marks about its funding before this crisis. I would be very interested to know what the panel’s views are on the different ways in which special educational needs, and I include within that dyslexia and dyspraxia, may have been impacted by the loss of schooling and the reliance on online learning. What steps do you think should be taken when schools do go back to ensure that those with specific learning disabilities get the support they need to catch up and a bad situation is not made even worse?
Leora Cruddas: Thank you for that really important question. For pupils with special educational needs and disabilities, very good diagnostic assessments need to be made when pupils return to school to identify their learning loss, as with other pupils, so that we can put in place provision to help them catch up those gaps in learning. You mentioned the Oak National Academy. They do have a department, if you like, that is particularly looking at provision for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities.
Unity Howard: I echo a bit of what Leora said there. Special free schools have been in touch with us a lot about their concern about delivering remote and online learning and also about the additional challenges that pupils with particular needs will have in terms of reintegrating education. I think it is all about base learning. After that—and there is a current SEND review going on—we need a clear plan about how we will form the SEND system to end the postcode lottery.
Q615 Chair: How many AP or special schools, free schools, are there?
Unity Howard: There are about 56 special free schools open and about 15 more in the pipeline.
Q616 Chair: Of the ones that have been open, have they all been open over Covid for vulnerable pupils?
Unity Howard: We do not have enough data to know.
Chair: Can you let us know? Tom, you wanted to come back briefly.
Q617 Tom Hunt: On the point of the Oak National Academy, I know that there is a very good SEND element to it. Initially, that was not necessarily appropriate for dyslexic pupils, who did not quite need that. They needed something that was almost in between the mainstream and that provision. That I understand has now been dealt with and I had a conversation with the national curriculum director. I would just say a realisation that for many children with SEND, they do often rely upon relationships with certain teachers and, as somebody who had difficulties myself, I know that is the case. Losing those relationships during this period—
Chair: Judith, can you give a brief comment, please?
Councillor Blake: First of all, generally we know that disadvantaged pupils tend to get lower predictive grades than they often achieve, so I think that is a really big issue.
I just want to make a plea that we look at the areas where some young people have benefited from this period. The kids that we know about who have one-to-one support, some of them have really thrived because they have had that additional attention. We need to look at those kids where it has worked well and how we can learn from that experience and build it into our plans going forward.
Leora Cruddas: I agree with Judith’s observation about the learning that can be achieved. I am very pleased to hear that the national director from Oak National Academy was able to reassure you.
Q618 Ian Mearns: I would like to ask what support your member organisations and constituent members need going forward in order that they can support children and young people’s return to and ongoing education.
Leora Cruddas: The support that we need now is clarity from Government about decisions in the medium and longer term, in relation to education continuity planning. Even if these decisions have to be caveated about confirmation in the light of progress of the national crisis, we believe decisions need to be taken by the end of June at the very latest to give leaders time to plan and build confidence with stakeholder groups, including parents. We think that it is likely that leaders need to plan for more than one scenario. Obviously, we do want the full reopening of schools in September, but I do not think that we should assume that is the case; if there is another peak in the virus, for example, or indeed if there is a local lockdown. We think we need to plan for more than one scenario and clarity is now needed on what those scenarios are. CST has put forward three scenarios and has made a contribution to Government thinking on this.
Q619 Ian Mearns: It is not just important about how many settings are open, it is equally as important, if not more important, about how many children are being educated in those settings.
Leora Cruddas: Yes. As I said, we had hoped for a full return so we have 100% of children educated in those settings, but if we cannot we still need 100% of children being educated.
Councillor Blake: It is a very broad question and it is disappointing through the whole session I do not think we have mentioned early years at all, absolutely crucial, and it is in chaos. It really needs sorting out. They have had mixed guidance, mixed messages, really concerned about funding. The other issue is in terms of wraparound facilities at the beginning and end of the day, which is going to have such a critical impact on parents being able to return to work.
In terms of the things we need and the financial situation that is facing local authorities, it is absolutely dire. Authorities are looking at only being able to provide statutory services at the moment if we do not get the results that we were promised right at the beginning. All of the things around family group conferencing, the early intervention, all of those things that are going to be so important, extra site capacity, are going to be at risk. We really need to take the funding of local authorities seriously. We are taking the funding of the NHS seriously and local authorities really do need to be addressed, otherwise so many of the services that will help young people get back into sustained learning are really going to be at risk.
Ian Mearns: Thank you very much, Judith. That is a very important point. Unity, did you want to come in?
Unity Howard: In terms of what we need for September, it is to establish that reopening of schools, that we can put a protective ring around the education system to prepare and provide resilience for a second wave. We are focusing so much on the September opening that we are not thinking about how the system can be flexible if there is a second wave. That is, first, about infrastructure, which was mentioned this morning, whether or not that is about creating thousands of micro schools that are attached to additional schools, but it is also about the Government providing an overall framework for what every school and every pupil is entitled to around their education. As Leora mentioned at the beginning, the sooner these details can come out the more school leaders can use the summer to plan for these things.
Q620 Ian Mearns: What is your view—and I think Judith has already alluded to this—on the quality, quantity and timing of information, advice and guidance that has emanated from the Department for Education?
Councillor Blake: We have to get away from the approach that has been taken so far. First of all, we get a rumour that something is going to happen, and then we get a political announcement, and then we get the guidance coming. We have to get that the other way around. We have to do that serious planning, and this is particularly important for September. We need to have the information, we need to have the consultation now, coming forward with the guidance, and then going into implementation phase. It has been the wrong way round and that is what has led to so much confusion.
I have to say I do not think enough emphasis has been put on the fact that parents have lost confidence. We can put everything in place, but if the parents do not have the confidence to come back, send their kids back, they will not. That is absolutely critical and it is getting that information, good flow, local stakeholders involved, so that everyone is on the same page and critically working on the testing, tracing and containing element. Local authorities need the powers to be able to close parts of schools, or whole schools if necessary, which will give the confidence to everyone to know that we know exactly where the virus is and that we can respond immediately if there is any sign of it re-emerging.
Leora Cruddas: There has been a lot of guidance and sometimes there have been some predictions in the guidance, but it is the job of organisations like mine—and Julie McCulloch talked about this earlier—to help schools and trusts navigate this territory. I agree with Judith that we need to start working the other way round so that we do the detail planning before the announcement is made.
There is a very specific issue I want to highlight, which was referred to earlier, and that is the issue of local directors of public health, local authorities with their corporate public health duties, and how that decision sits with decisions that are made more nationally. Sometimes that has been really difficult for parents and the wider public because local directors of public health and local authorities have been giving one message and national Government have been giving another. CST has advised Government that what we need is a decision-making hierarchy and a single form of risk assessment that directors of public health can use to carry out their statutory duties as public health professionals, with input from the Joint Biosecurity Centre, so that we are all using the same data and we can verify those risk assessments.
Unity Howard: I am not going to say a huge amount. It has been challenging for schools to deal with. There has been lots of guidance and it has been contradictory. That being said, the Government cannot safeguard against the size of every school classroom and there needs to be a clear line about what the Government can provide and what school leaders working in partnership with local authorities and other organisations can achieve on their own.
Q621 Ian Mearns: An important point coming out from this is one made by Judith, and that is the level of parental confidence in terms of return to school. Could the DfE be doing something more directly with parents? For instance, an organisation called Parentkind did an online survey. They were hoping for 1,000 responses but got 257,000 responses within 48 hours. If a small voluntary organisation can get that sort of response, surely the DfE could do something similar to gauge parental confidence and do something in order to engender that parental confidence. Do you have any comments on that?
Unity Howard: As was highlighted in the previous session, the campaigns being run by the unions have in some ways undermined parental confidence in school reopening. What we need from the Government is a national campaign to talk directly to parents about the importance of education. We had a campaign around saving lives and saving the NHS. We need a similar one now for education.
Ian Mearns: I am not convinced it is just the unions, I think the Government have been doing a great job themselves, but that is neither here nor there.
Chair: Apsana, do you have a question?
Q622 Apsana Begum: My question was—and we covered this in the last panel—how confident do your members and your organisations feel in terms of reopening and the guidance that you have had? How timely has it been, what has the content been like of the guidance, and do you feel satisfied that has been sufficient? A few of you have mentioned about the union intervention and how that has had an impact, you are saying, on parental confidence, but how confident have you felt in terms of the advice that you have received from the Government?
Chair: Can I have brief answers from you?
Unity Howard: I think we have covered that free schools have had issues with the guidance. In our survey some want more and some want less and some think that the existing ones are helpful or not helpful. It is not a unified view and different people will take different things from it.
Leora Cruddas: I think confidence is growing. Certainly, CST members are taking a deliberate positive action to build the confidence of parents and communities. Briefly, let me give you one example.
Chair: Make it quick. We have to finish in a minute.
Leora Cruddas: The example is a family of seven schools across Derbyshire, and they have been working really hard in a team to build the confidence of families through this crisis. Their approach has been what they call—lovely words—the rising strong approach.
Chair: Thank you. Again, please send us the example. Judith, can you answer in a concise way if possible?
Councillor Blake: Yes. The lack of clarity in the recommendations that came out to the public on the BAME inquiry speak to your point. We need much more clarity, but I would say that from a local authority perspective we do not have, yet, the data that we need to have the confidence to make decisions going forward. That is what we are working on and my chief executive is working in the test and tracing team to get that local dimension. At the moment it is lacking, and that is what we need so that we know what is happening in each of our areas.
The thing around focusing on children being vulnerable is not the only issue. Children can be carriers of the virus, and if they live in a highly vulnerable community—they might live in a household with multi-generational members of their family, for example—I do not think those issues have really been taken seriously enough, and those are the factors we need to focus on.
Q623 Apsana Begum: Sorry, just a quick follow-up question, Chair. Do you think there needs to be a review on the way in which ethnicity is looked at and considered in terms of equality impact assessments by local authorities?
Chair: A yes or no answer, please.
Councillor Blake: The health impact assessments as well, to go with it.
Leora Cruddas: It is a question for local authorities.
Unity Howard: Yes.
Chair: Okay, thank you. Kim, do you want to ask your question or are you okay?
Q624 Kim Johnson: I will ask it. It will be a very quick answer. During the first session we heard how some teachers adapted very quickly to online learning but, as mentioned, this is not a panacea, particularly as thousands of kids are disenfranchised due to the lack of resources. What technological innovations would your members be keen to retain and further develop as we move into the future?
Chair: In a nutshell, Unity?
Unity Howard: I have mentioned that some free schools have developed fantastic technological innovations with higher attendance than their in-school ones. They all want to keep that. It is very much we need to stop seeing blended learning and online learning as a preserve of the IT department and schools really need to invest in this as part of their long-term strategy for education.
Leora Cruddas: I would say there is no substitute for the classroom because classroom teachers have a variety of ways of checking that learning has happened. They can diagnose people’s weaknesses and decide what to do next and they can break down complex activity. I think we need to understand more about how these principles of learning can be used in remote education.
Councillor Blake: First of all, we need to get the infrastructure right, the broadband. Equipment is still not coming through, but there has been a lazy assumption that if a young person is given a laptop they will immediately start using it and start accessing, and that has proved not to be the case. It is a resource that could be used and it can be one of the tools of successfully getting back into schools, into learning, in September.
Q625 Chair: Finally, there has been a lot of talk from us as a Committee and other people about a catch-up premium in terms of the catch-up programme for the left-behind pupils. Have you done any costings or how you think it should work at all, particularly Unity and Leora, but I would be very interested in your views, Judith? This is the very last question, so could you all answer concisely?
Unity Howard: We certainly have not done any costings yet. We are not the kind of membership organisation that puts together one thing. We like to represent the plurality and diversity of all free schools. I know that some free schools are considering doing some catch-up over the summer but, as I mentioned before, we need to have a long view of what this catch-up looks like. Summer school should probably be different to what schools are going to provide in September—focus on wellbeing, rounder education and things like that.
Leora Cruddas: Catch-up is a longer-term endeavour, and it is best delivered when schools are back. I would suggest that activity over the summer is focused on activity rather than catch-up, and focused particularly on young people’s health and wellbeing.
Councillor Blake: Robert, I think this was first suggested by Jim O’Neill from the Northern Powerhouse Partnership.
Chair: I did an article jointly with him on it in The Telegraph. Sorry, carry on.
Councillor Blake: It is an idea that is gaining traction and there is a lot of work going into it. The pupil premium really does focus the minds of schools but also governors in how it is spent through the accountability route, and I think it could be a really good mechanism for getting the focus where it is going to need to be.
Q626 Chair: Thank you. Leora, you said it should only be activities. What do you mean by that? Surely, if there is an option of some kind of extra learning on offer as well as pastoral care and wellbeing, people should take example of that.
Leora Cruddas: Yes, I believe so. I think that any kind of tuition is most effective when it is aligned with the school curriculum and when the tutor understands the individual child’s gaps in learning. That would be very difficult to achieve if it is dislocated from the curriculum over the summer. There are ways in which activity-type programmes can support learning, of course there are, and we would want to see those over the summer. I do not think that we can put more pressure on teachers and leaders over the summer by expecting schools to remain open.
Q627 Chair: No, but you could have these tutor programmes, the tutor charities, the retired teachers, Ofsted inspectors perhaps, helping.
Leora Cruddas: As I say, I think that is a longer-term endeavour best aligned with a school’s curriculum. It probably would make the most impact if that was done when schools open properly, hopefully in September, than it would to be initiated over the summer when there is a risk of dislocating it from the curriculum.
Chair: Thank you. I have quite a different view on that but I really respect your view, obviously.
Can I thank everybody? It is really appreciated. Sincere apologies again for you being delayed and for overrunning this session. It is very hard with the broadcasting that we have and the timings. I do apologise and I wish you and your members good health and safety. Can I thank my fellow MPs for staying on and missing Prime Minister’s Questions, the first half of it anyway? I really appreciate it and I wish you all well. Thank you.