In the old days - by which I mean 18 months ago - when a journalist phoned me, it was usually to talk about education.
These days, more often than not, it’s about face masks. And so this week it wearily continues.
A reminder of the latest developments: from now Year 7s and above are no longer advised to wear face coverings in classrooms.
From next Thursday, they’ll be a thing of the past in schools’ and colleges’ communal areas, too.
Except, back in the real world, they won’t be. In the latest iteration of Schools Covid-19 operational guidance, it says:
“A director of public health might advise you that face coverings should temporarily be worn in communal areas or classrooms (by pupils, staff and visitors, unless exempt). You should make sure your contingency plans cover this possibility.”
So, when Conservative backbenchers on Wednesday lustily cheered the prime minister’s announcement that face masks would no longer be required in classrooms, I’m assuming they hadn’t read this particular bit of governmental small print.
Now, of course, will begin the usual game conducted in some sections of the media: calling out schools for not obeying the government. Even though, as we have just seen, the actual guidance allows for the use of face masks on a local basis.
And, in any case, all of this is advisory rather than being decreed in tablets of stone.
Covid: Removing face masks from schools
The announcement on Wednesday was said by some to be part of “Operation Red Meat” - one of a series of policies designed to appeal to disgruntled Conservative MPs in order to encourage them to shore up a critically wounded prime minister rather than turf him out of Downing Street.
Most of us would, of course, want decisions on public health matters to be taken on public health grounds, rather than on the basis of trying to save the prime minister’s skin.
So, at the very least, let’s hope there is a smorgasbord of evidence to support this week’s decision because, as we know only too well, huge numbers of pupils and staff are currently absent with Covid, and ditching face masks, we are told, runs the risk of increasing rates of infection.
Having said all that, I’m not in favour of keeping face masks for any longer than is absolutely necessary. No one is.
Face masks are obviously a barrier to learning in the classroom, even if there may be an argument for keeping them longer in communal areas where the crowds are bigger and young people inevitably mix with a much wider group of contacts.
It’s always been a case of balancing the usefulness of face masks in reducing transmission against their various disadvantages, and that is a terribly difficult balance to get right.
The question of when it is right to step them up or step them down is not an exact science, and it may be that making those decisions on a local public health basis is the best way of proceeding.
I was also struck by the findings of a recent poll by Parentkind, which shows that 60 per cent of parents disagreed with the use of face masks in classrooms, and that even on the seemingly less controversial topic of communal areas, 56 per cent disagreed.
It would be very hard to continue for very long with policies that are apparently not supported by the majority of parents.
And I was also struck by the reaction to Wednesday’s announcement from the National Deaf Children’s Society. The charity’s campaigns director, Mike Hobday, was quoted in the media as saying it was delighted with the news, adding that it would be a “huge relief to England’s 45,000 deaf children, who tell us that face masks have left them struggling to learn and left out of conversations with their friends”.
He added: “We now need to get on with the job of making sure that deaf children are given extra help to catch up and recover from the isolation they have been experiencing.”
So, all things considered, perhaps we have ended up in more or less the right place on face masks, albeit probably more by accident than design.
I recognise that not everybody will agree with that conclusion and the statistics on absence among pupils and staff over the next few weeks may give cause for a rethink.
The same challenges remain
But it does feel like the public - or at least a significant proportion of the public - have had enough of Covid and want to see the back of face masks and all the other paraphernalia of the pandemic.
That, of course, leaves those working in our schools and colleges in a hugely difficult position. Life can’t simply default back to normal on the basis of wishful thinking.
There will continue to be considerable disruption.
And then, of course, there’s the matter of exams in the summer for thousands of students who have been in and out of school for the past two years.
We cannot emphasise enough the importance of the government recognising how challenging this is going to continue to be. No one should read this week’s announcements - tainted by “red meat” suspicions or not - as if Covid is behind us.
So there are things that the government must continue to do, and do more of.
It must improve the financial assistance available through the Covid workforce fund for the cost of supply cover, and extend it beyond mid-February when the scheme is currently due to end.
It has to abandon its nonsensical plan to publish key stage 4 and post-16 performance tables. The Department for Education has itself said it recognises “the uneven impact on schools and colleges of the pandemic” and that it would ensure clear messages are placed on the performance tables “to advise caution when drawing conclusions”.
But what’s the point of publishing data that you know is not reliable?
And it has to ensure that Ofsted - which has shown admirable restraint of late through a softening of its attitude towards granting inspection deferrals - does not revert to its normal missionary zeal, charging back into schools as though normality has been restored.
Heated debates about face coverings may continue to rage in the world beyond education, and especially across the clanging echo chamber of social media.
Meanwhile, in our schools and colleges, our pupil referral units and special schools, teams of staff are continuing to do extraordinary work in extraordinary times.
They certainly know that we’re still a long way from business as usual.
Geoff Barton is general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders
