A group of schoolchildren wind their way through the streets like a slinky toy, linked in pairs and dwarfed by rucksacks with chiming key chains. Not an unusual sight in September, but these last months have been highly unusual. 

After half a year of disrupted schooling, the PM has ordered it a “moral duty” to return children to schools. There are economic incentives behind this move: the return to school returns parents to work. But the moral incentive Johnson is driving with is the right of every child to an education. 

The Child Poverty Action Group estimates that an average of nine children in a classroom of 30 will live in poverty. But here in Tower Hamlets it’s as much as 57% (the highest in the country). This means that statistically, one child in each pair that passes me by on the street comes from a home which lacks resources to meet their basic needs.

A good education can break the cycle of poverty. Once these children reach the playground they should reach a level playing-field. But for the first time in a decade, the Education Policy Institute (EPI) found that the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers had stopped closing. These figures predate the effects COVID-19 disruption. Now, the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) estimates that the gap between disadvantaged and wealthy pupils has widened by as much as 46%. 

But of course, these aren’t the only scary numbers to consider when packing millions of children back into classrooms. Schools have since re-opened their doors for a month and the UK coronavirus alert level has hurtled to four out of five. Politicians can talk with conviction about a child’s right to education, but should it come at the price of the health of students and teachers? A sick child can’t learn and a sick teacher can’t teach. And for some getting sick with COVID-19 will have worse consequences.

To find out how equipped teachers feel to return to school – and the impacts they’ve seen the disruption has had on children’s learning – I interviewed eight education workers. These included teachers and teaching assistants, those working in primary and secondary schools, in state and private schools and urban and rural settings. I even managed to convince the representative of a large Teachers Union to speak off the record. 

The following accounts are from a diverse range of voices which reflect the UK’s diverse education system  but what they have to say is remarkably similar. The government has failed to safely prepare schools, and our educators are fearful.

All names have been changed.

“I don’t know how long schools can carry on like this” – Sarah, Teachers Union Representative

As countries around the world deliberated over the education of their students and the reopening of schools, how well did our government prepare? 

The government issued 5 main guidelines. The first requirement is that children and staff who are ill with coronavirus symptoms — or who have family members who are ill with coronavirus symptoms — stay at home. The others include robust hand and respiratory hygiene measures, enhanced cleaning, and social distancing where possible. 

To limit the likelihood of transmission, schools have divided their students and staff into ‘bubbles’ or ‘pods’. In primary schools, this might be one class and one teacher. In secondary schools, this might be a year group or half a year group, to allow for more specialised subjects to be taught. 

But the teachers I spoke to mentioned being sent amended guidelines at 5:30pm the Friday before term re-started. This did not inspire them with confidence. One teaching assistant, Emma, in a secondary school in Tower Hamlets, described ‘anger at the lack of consistency’ and contempt for the ‘arrogance’ of decision-makers in Westminster to distribute these guidelines so late.

And how seriously schools enforce the advice they’ve been given is another matter. ‘The COVID policy amounts to hand-gel,’ said Jamie, a teacher at an academy-run primary school. ‘There has been no social distancing.’ I asked Jamie if he would feel safe teaching if there was a rise in cases, or if he was physically vulnerable. He answered that ‘with the current lack of precautions, I wouldn’t feel comfortable staying in a second-wave.’

Where does the onus lie? On the government for issuing unclear and changeable protocol – or on individual schools? ‘Schools have been well supported by the local authority,’ was Sarah’s opinion, a representative for a large teachers’ union, ‘but the wider government has not been good’. She praised the majority of headteachers and senior leadership teams in her area for being supportive of their staff, but warned that she didn’t know ‘how long schools can carry on as-is’. An ominous prediction, but is this opinion shared by educators across the country?

“Teachers feel like sacrificial lambs” – Anna, Teaching Assistant

‘Some teachers feel like sacrificial lambs,’ Amy told me, a state secondary school teacher in London. She informed me that although her school was doing the best it could to protect staff and pupils, some teachers were having to ‘cross pods’ to provide specialist teaching. Some teachers in her school felt worried or at risk. These stories are alarming, but most teachers I spoke to reflected Amy’s sentiment: schools had prepared for coronavirus as best as they could, but with limited space and resources there was only so much they could do.

While teachers clean down their classrooms between lessons, there are inevitable congregations in corridors. And when the school bell tolls at the end of the day, teachers look on hopelessly as pupils and their families mingle. In our conversation, Sarah predicted that staggering times for parents and students during drop-off and pick-up will only become harder as the weather becomes wetter and colder.

As schools prepared for coronavirus, they collided with logistical issues. Schools are ill-equipped to accommodate proper social distancing, and modern schools — Sarah told me — may not even have windows that open. Even schools with enhanced facilities, like the prestigious boarding school whose teacher, Ralph, I spoke to, cannot provide a totally Covid-secure space. ‘No school is built to accommodate social distancing,’ he admits. Because space is limited, so is the effectiveness of controls.

On top of catching up with a term of lost or limited teaching, Covid-19 measures have strained school working environments. The teachers I spoke to commented that there is an enormous pressure on their workloads. ‘It’s really difficult to get the kids to take the rules seriously,’ Amy tells me, a sentiment reflected by other secondary school teachers.

Teachers have had to take on extra cleaning duties, shorten their breaks, and ignore the noise pollution caused by leaving windows and doors open, diminishing the quality of their lessons. Teachers and teaching staff have also found it difficult being isolated to the very front of the class. ‘I can’t do my job,’ said teaching assistant Emma. Struggling students are often too shy to ask for help. Teaching assistants normally pace the classroom to offer discreet aid. Teaching assistants have adapted, instead pulling students out for isolated discussions after class, but Emma fears struggling students will fall through the net.

With so much added stress, teachers welcomed the government’s announcement of a pay rise of between 2.75% — 5.5%. But Ben, a rural primary school teacher, is sceptical. ‘Where will this money come from?’ he asks. It will need to come from within school budgets, and after years of underfunding and budget cuts, Ben warns that ‘some schools won’t be able to provide the additional money’.

The pay rise also excludes other school support staff – teaching assistants like Emma – along with school caretakers and kitchen and admin staff, all of whom are working harder than ever before, and without whom the school system would fall apart.

“You would have thought they would have prioritised tests for children and teachers” – Jamie, State Primary School Teacher

‘You’re sat wondering if you could be teaching,’ said Jamie. He isolated himself after becoming unwell. Now he feels better, but can’t return to school until he’s been tested. Jamie’s headteacher promised they would send him a test, but that test never came. Are schools prepared for coronavirus if they haven’t got access to effective testing practices?

I hear similar stories from other frustrated teachers. ‘You would have thought they would have prioritised tests for children and teachers,’ says Ben, a teacher in a rural primary school. Two of Ben’s colleagues have isolated themselves with potential symptoms. After 48 hours of trying to get through to the testing service, both teachers had to travel more than an hour and a half to be tested. ‘They were told that there were no available tests in the South,’ Ben says. In a small primary school like Ben’s, the absence of two teachers strains an already tense situation. 

It’s not just teachers who are having a difficult time getting tests. Ben tells me that in his small class, 2-3 different children are off each week with vague illnesses. That child’s class ‘bubble’ usually remains in school, potentially infected, and potentially infecting their loved ones at home.  But when a case is confirmed, and a ‘pod’ or ‘bubble’ of schoolchildren are told to self-isolate, this prompts a new set of problems.

Sarah, the union representative, told me that delays in testing children within isolating ‘bubbles’ has had greater implications for teacher absences than teachers being unable to get tests. Why? Childcare. If a teacher’s child is sent home as part of an infected ‘bubble’, that teacher will have to take time off work to take care of them. Unless a teacher’s child is tested swiftly, that teacher is off work – potentially for a fortnight, and potentially pointlessly.

It seems that local councils and schools prepared for coronavirus diligently, but that the government and track and trace system does not have adequate testing capacity. ‘It wouldn’t take too many teachers to be off for the school to shut completely,’ says Daisy, a teacher in an academy-run secondary school. Daisy’s school was a special measures school until it was taken on by an academy trust. At her school, 40% of pupils qualify for pupil premium, which means that 40% of pupils live under the poverty line. She says that because of her school’s accreditation, it’s difficult to get supply teaching. In March, her school was forced to close prior to lockdown because they ‘ran out of staff to run the school’. 

But not everyone is worried about testing. The difference between how private and state schools prepared for coronavirus this term is vast. According to the Independent Schools Association (ISA) and the Independent Association of Prep Schools (IAPS), private schools are investing in testing equipment. Eton college tested at least 1,300 students privately at the beginning of term, with ‘a few’ students testing positive and being placed under isolation. The Guardian also reported that Benenden School, a boarding school in Kent, purchased a £35,000 testing machine at the beginning of term.

“It became clear that many students didn’t have access to laptops, or were sharing one laptop between their family” – Daisy, State Secondary School Teacher 

Failure to allocate sufficient testing for schools, along with the Department of Education’s initiative to get schools on the online platform Microsoft Teams, suggests that the government anticipates schools’ closure and a return to online teaching. But what consequences would this have for schoolchildren? For the 4.2 million children who live in poverty across the UK, they’ll be devastating ones. ‘It became clear that many students didn’t have access to laptops, or were sharing one laptop between their family,’ Daisy told me.

I heard a variant of this sentence from every state primary and secondary school educator I have spoken to. ‘A lot of kids were accessing the lesson via phones and submitting their work very late,’ she continues. Daisy’s school, like most of the others schools I speak to, took advantage of the government’s scheme to provide laptops and wireless routers to disadvantaged students during lockdown.

Although this has certainly made a vast difference, it is clear from the teachers I speak to that it is an imperfect solution. When Daisy did receive completed work, it was obvious that many of her students had misunderstood the work. She emphasised that this was particularly obvious in homework from children with special needs or who came from chaotic backgrounds, but she is unable to give these pupils the support they would have received in school. 

Most schools prepared for coronavirus this September by investing energy into setting up online learning portals. Ben, a rural primary school teacher, also commented that the move towards online teaching in spring had been fraught. He described most of the teachers in his school as ‘technologically illiterate’ and added that younger staff members took on an increased workload to help their colleagues make the transition.

But what Ben criticised most fervently was the lack of clear government guidelines. Although Ben’s school supplied a plethora of remote learning activities, he was aware of schools in the local area that did very little or nothing at all. ‘You’d have thought after two or three weeks of online teaching, there would be some guidance,’ he explained.  With such lack of clarity, it is unsurprising that Jamie’s primary academy school in London advised him to ‘assume the pupils have not learnt anything during the last 6 months’.

Jamie, like other teachers, was anxious about having to squeeze in a whole spring term of teaching besides the autumn curriculum. This disruption has already left a lasting imprint. Anna, a teacher in a state secondary school, commented that the incoming Year Seven cohort had the lowest literacy score on record. She expressed concern about teaching a syllabus which centred around reading aloud, when it was obvious many of her students had lost confidence in their literacy abilities.

Amy the state secondary school teacher, said that two of her pupils arrived back after isolating with their parents, both Spanish migrants, unable to speak English.  Even with online learning, and even if more laptops are distributed to disadvantaged students, without proper IT support, a quiet area to study in, and parents who are free to expend energy supervising their children, some school pupils may lose out by isolating at home.

“Our SEN [special educational needs] students are actually doing better” – Ralph, Private School Teacher

This is less likely for students at well-facilitated private schools like Ralph’s. Private schools prepared for coronavirus with the assistance of bespoke IT departments and the latest technologies. ‘Our SEN [special educational needs] students are actually doing better,’ Ralph told me. Each department in Ralph’s school has its own designated IT support staff on hand to help teachers. They have been able to create interactive and dynamic lessons. ‘The transition has been seamless,’ Ralph continued. ‘We haven’t lost any time.’ In light of this, Ralph was not concerned about the prospect of resuming online teaching.

With parents paying upwards of £23,000 on their child’s tuition per year, it is not a surprise that they get their moneys’ worth. The polarity in facilities was what Jamie, the primary school academy teacher, expressed most concern about. Having taught in a private secondary school during the first Covid-19 wave, Jamie took for granted the specialised IT support and high-level engagement facilitated through cutting-edge technology. The reality, as Jamie would find out, for the 93.5% of students who do not go to private school, is far bleaker.

But closing schools across the country isn’t just a bleak prospect for students. Sarah, the teacher’s union representative, thought that that infection rates would spike if schools had to send more students home. Even if parents work from home, it is unrealistic and unfair to expect that students will be strictly supervised. Without supervising schoolchildren — especially teenagers — in a controlled school environment, young people are more likely to mix, ignore social distancing measures, and spread the disease between each other and their families. 

“Our plans to keep schools and front-line public services open rely on an effective testing system.’ – Rachel Blake, Labour Councillor for Tower Hamlets

Just down the road from me, a new drop-in testing site has opened. But this only happened after the council ran a two-month campaign. Local Labour councillor Rachel Blake said: ‘It’s vital that this new test centre adds much-needed local testing capacity for our community. Our plans to keep schools and front-line public services open rely on an effective testing system.’ 

Tower Hamlets now has one of the highest levels of Covid-19 in London. It is likely that without good access to local testing, the ‘pod’ of schoolchildren that passed by me would be forced to isolate at home. Confronted with inconsistent government advice, limited facilities and an ill-prepared test and trace system, local authorities and schools have worked together to go above and beyond to prepare for, and facilitate, the return of students this September.

More than any year in recent history, World Teachers Day on Monday 5th October serves as a poignant reminder of the tremendous service and care our teachers and teaching assistants continue to provide amid this pandemic. We are frequently told to adjust to a ‘new normal’, but as schools and councils grapple with varying resources and varying degrees of success, it is increasingly clear there is no shared ‘normal’. Are schools prepared for coronavirus? We can only hope that with better testing facilities, schools are able to remain as fully open as possible and that this new ‘normal’ does not divert disadvantaged children further away from their potential.