It used to be the case that the only things that were certain in life were death and taxes. To that list we can now add unending turmoil and confusion at the Department for Education. Today Gavin Williamson U-turned on the government’s previous pledge to keep schools open, announcing that a number of schools in Covid ‘hotspots’ would not be going back as planned next week.
Primaries in some areas – including a slightly random patchwork
of London boroughs – will not reopen next week. Those in lower tiers and some Tier 4 areas will start term as planned. The following week, years 11 and 13 will return to secondary schools, and from the week beginning 18 January, all year groups will return. The Education Secretary also said testing would begin ‘in earnest’ in the second week of term, ‘with those who are in exam years at the head of the queue’.
The decision on closing some schools in the hotspots was taken, predictably, with just days to go before term starts – though perhaps it represents an improvement at the end of a year in which the government has moved so slowly it has at times been travelling backwards on matters such as exams. When the Education Secretary announced the changes to school re-opening in the Commons, he found MPs lining up to get reassurance that this was the final answer, rather than just the latest position before more last-minute changes. Teachers cannot take the government at its word after the past few months.
PS The boroughs with primary schools affected are:
London:
Barking and Dagenham, Barnet, Bexley, Brent, Bromley, Croydon, Ealing, Enfield, Hammersmith and Fulham, Havering, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Kensington and Chelsea, Merton, Newham, Redbridge, Richmond-Upon-Thames Southwark, Sutton, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Wandsworth, Westminster
Essex:
Brentwood, Epping Forest, Castle Point, Basildon, Rochford, Harlow, Chelmsford, Braintree, Maldon, Southend on Sea, Thurrock
Kent:
Dartford, Gravesham, Sevenoaks, Medway, Ashford, Maidstone, Tonbridge and Malling, Tunbridge Wells, Swale
East Sussex:
Hastings, Rother
Buckinghamshire:
Milton Keynes
Hertfordshire:
Watford, Broxbourne, Hertsmere, Three Rivers
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