Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman has said she would like schools to have a “can do” attitude to reopening, and that school leaders and teachers must be helped to use their “entrepreneurial” energy to open up again.
“I would like to hear a much more optimistic approach. I think it should be about what we can do, not about what we can’t do,” she said.
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“Many schools are already showing that within the public health guidance that sets the expectation for these bubbles of 15 children there is a great deal that can be done.
“What’s been really welcome over the last couple of days is to see an emerging consensus about the importance of planning to get children back into school - that children have missed too much education, all children have lost something and for a few, it’s really, really worrying that that contact with them has been lost, so I welcome that.
“It’s not just about the national conversations, it’s also about the local, about making sure that we’ve got some enabling structures around this that let that entrepreneurial energy that school leaders, teachers, people in local government, that so many people have in so many places really can do everything it can.”
Appearing on BBC Radio 4‘s Today programme, Ms Spielman also called for more clarity over the “minimum expectations” for online learning.
And she said she had not seen any plans for summer catch up provision but believed they were under development.