The leader of the largest secondary heads’ union has issued a warning about the scale of the task that will confront his members next term.
Responding to detailed Department for Education guidance on opening schools in September, Geoff Barton, the Association of School and College Leaders’ general secretary, said: “It will be immediately apparent to anyone reading this guidance that it is enormously challenging to implement.
“The logistics of keeping apart many different ‘bubbles’ of children in a full school, including whole-year groups comprising hundreds of pupils, is mind-boggling.”
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Mr Barton added: “School leaders will have to consider implementing staggered starts, finishes and lunchtimes, alongside transport to and from school, on an epic scale.”
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The actual DfE guidance acknowledges that the use of small groups “restricts the normal operation of schools and presents both educational and logistical challenges”.
It says these include “the cleaning and use of shared spaces, such as playgrounds, boarding houses, dining halls and toilets, and the provision of specialist teaching”.
“This is the case in both primary and secondary schools, but is particularly difficult in secondary schools,” the guidance adds.
Mr Barton said that while the ASCL shared the ambition of bringing back all pupils to school in the autumn, the options were limited and there needed to be an understanding of what will be feasible for schools.
“There just needs to be a sense of reality about what is possible,” he said.
“School leaders will do their best, as they always do, and ASCL will support them all the way, but this is not going to be perfect. It will be hard for everyone concerned to implement and become accustomed to difficult and complicated systems, and it will not work smoothly all the time.
“And while we share the ambition of bringing all pupils back to school in the autumn, we would urge the government to have in place a national Plan B in the event that we arrive at September and it becomes clear that a full return is just too risky.”
