Anger over back to school retreat as ministers back down on plan for all primary pupils to return this term

The Children’s Commissioner today led an outcry as the Government retreated partly from its plan to give all primary school pupils a full month of lessons before the summer holidays.

Anne Longfield said millions of vulnerable, lonely and disadvantaged children would suffer real damage and warned that for many “childhood is just going to be furloughed for months”.

In a Commons statement this afternoon, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson was expected to announce that school heads will be given “flexibility” to decide whether they can get all or just some of their remaining pupils back into lessons while practising social distancing.

Mr Williamson will thank the “ingenuity” of primary heads who managed to open up successfully last week for reception and year six classes.

The first official statistics are expected to show more than half of eligible children in those years attended lessons.

The setback comes after Health Secretary Matt Hancock said last night that September was the “earliest” that most secondaries would be able to open fully, meaning millions of pupils could lose more than six months of schooling.

Ministers hope that giving flexibility to primary heads, rather than pressing a blanket demand for the return of all primary classes, will encourage schools to be resourceful and get as many children as possible into lessons.

Boris Johnson’s route map out of lockdown spoke of getting all young pupils back “before the summer for a month if feasible”.

UK Schools begin to reopen during Coronavirus lockdown ease

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But Public Health England guidance on coronavirus stipulates that lessons must be held in groups of no more than 15, meaning that most primaries need twice as many classrooms.

Labour and the big teaching unions welcomed the retreat as overdue.

But Ms Longfield, Children’s Commissioner for England, said: “I’m really disappointed for those children and those parents who have been led to believe they were going to able to get back into school before the summer. This really is the children who are missing out here and paying the penalty.”

She warned that “huge educational gaps” were increasing and said there were real concerns about mental health and children in fragile families or those who had no access to laptops for online support.

And she accused the Government of putting more effort into reopening the economy than schools, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The measures to save jobs, the 4,000-bed hospitals, propping up the economy — all of those things have happened in a way that is unimaginable. It is that level of will and determination to overcome the practicalities that’s needed now.

“Because children’s education does matter as much as the economy and we need to invest in it because without it there’s a risk that childhood is just going to be furloughed for months.”

Ms Longfield added: “I also think that children are in danger of being forgotten in this lifting of lockdown. We are seeing a situation where theme parks are going to be open in a month’s time, shops, pubs and restaurants but still children not back in school.”

Robert Halfon, chairman of the Commons’ education select committee, told Today: “We could have an epidemic of education poverty and be damaging the life chances of hundreds of thousands of young people.”

He said the UK was a “strange country” for prioritising pubs over schools. “We campaign for pubs and cafés to open and yet we say that to open schools before September is too risky, when all the evidence ... suggests otherwise,” he said.

Mr Halfon said 700,000 children were missing out on learning and urged the creation of a national education broadcasting service on television, plus “an army of volunteers” to run summer schools to help children catch up for lost time.

Shadow education secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey welcomed the decision but added: “The Government must now give answers on what resources it will provide to adequately support home learning, from the provision of digital devices to all pupils who need one through to targeted online tuition.”

Mary Bousted, of the National Education Union, said: “It has taken the Government some time to recognise what was obvious to most. The Government’s social distancing rules made it impossible for primary schools to admit all pupils before the summer holidays.”

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