Schools have done a remarkable job since they started reopening nearly two months ago, on 11 August. Attendance data - now published daily as part of a Scottish government “coronavirus trends” update - tells you that. The annual school attendance rate for 2018-19 was 93 per cent, and the daily attendance rate this year has, since a dip down to a low of 84.2 per cent on 28 August, been broadly around the usual annual level.
That suggests a school system that retains high levels of trust, and with good reason. Schools are going to huge lengths for pupils just now. In next week’s magazine, to give just one example, we will explore how Scottish Borders schools accelerated plans for digital learning in response to the Covid outbreak.
But it’s not just innovation in the face of a crisis that deserves praise. The ways in which schools have developed and assiduously applied protocols to contend with a global pandemic - while maintaining as close to a sense of normality as possible - is equally worth lauding. As so often in life, the shiny and new is more likely to be highlighted, but quiet attention to detail arguably matters more; in school, this is what will help staff and pupils get through each day in the midst of a global crisis.
The past week or so has shown what can happen when something goes badly wrong in an education sector, with the confinement of thousands of university students after multiple spikes in Covid cases. We heard of threats of punitive-sounding sanctions for students, and of a lack of support for those who - away from home for the first time, with all the worry that entails at the best of times - suddenly found themselves in a situation that is light years away from what the first few weeks of university are supposed to be about.
Unlike universities, there has not been a single alarming narrative around schools to emerge and dominate news cycles since the summer holidays ended (not forgetting, of course, the exams fiasco that exploded shortly before schools came back). But this should not obscure the fact that, every day, countless Covid-stresses continue to afflict school staff throughout the country.
They still feel in the dark about so many aspects of the response to Covid, whether it’s exams, support for pupils with ASN, or what will happen in the event of a return to blended learning. As teacher Jamie Thom wrote in Tes Scotland last week, even weeks before the October break many teachers felt “pure done in”. And, as energy levels are being sapped, so too are school coffers. We’ve heard of schools conservatively estimating high five-figure annual sums for things that just weren’t part of their budgeting process last year: hand sanitiser, wipes, face coverings and the rest.
Things have come to a head for the EIS teaching union, which this week called for greater clarity on various Covid-related issues and shared its “grave concern over the rising number of coronavirus cases across Scotland”. Former president Nicola Fisher said the reopening of schools was “predicated on low instances of the virus” and that “current mitigations in our schools are just not effective”.
In the daily maelstrom of Covid stories (topped with a sprinkling of updates from the US presidential election campaign), schools can for longish stretches largely disappear from the headlines. Just because the wider public does not hear what is going on in schools, however, does not mean that all has been resolved - far from it.
The October holiday starts for some schools today and, for many others, at the end of next week. It comes after a term like no other, with who-knows-what awaiting when schools return. Make sure, then, to find time to switch off - your break has been richly earned.
@Henry_Hepburn
This article originally appeared in the 2 October 2020 issue under the headline “Just because schools aren’t in the headlines, doesn’t mean all is well”
