Schools should use hotels and retired teachers to ensure they can remain open safely, scientists suggested today.
In a new report by the “Independent Sage” committee, chaired by former chief scientific adviser Sir David King, experts suggest schools should be given government support to employ “additional teachers and [use] additional spaces so that [they] can operate smaller classes to enable physical distancing”.
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Professor Susan Michie, who participates on the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies and sits on the Independent Sage Committee, told Tes: “With doctors and nurses the government asked people who were recently retired to come back out of retirement…and what we’ve been suggesting actually all the way along is that the government do a similar thing for teachers.”
“Because there’ll be a lot of people who’ve retired over the last few years and we know that the satisfaction levels in the teaching profession have been very low - there’s been a lack of retention of teachers, and I think if they were asked to come back for a short period to deal with this emergency, then I think a lot of people would respond to it,” she added.
Professor Michie, a behavioural psychologist at University College London, said that “in terms of the [additional] spaces, there are a lot of unused workplaces, hotels etc that could be used for teaching spaces.”
The report by the Independent Sage Committee also calls for the expansion of testing facilities so that “all pupils, staff, and parents can access a local testing site, obtain a test without delay and receive test results within 24 hours”.
