My fellow teachers need to get a grip

At last, the government is doing something sensible. Amid the anxiety surrounding a putative ‘second wave’ of Covid-19, the Department for Education is standing firm in its commitment to re-open schools for all year groups come September. Reassuringly, the schools minister Nick Gibb is making this a non-negotiable priority.

‘Thank you Nick Gibb’ is not something I thought I would ever say. As a member of the maligned teaching profession, I have had my fill of Tory education initiatives over the past decade: accountability, performance-related pay and exam reforms. Such distractions are now a distant memory in the dystopian world of Covid.

Teaching is a stressful job, with a poor work-life balance – but it is a vocation. On a good day, with an engaged class, teaching is a rewarding social experience. Covid-19, or rather the government’s fatal decision to lock everyone down and – almost – lock the school gates too, put paid to the enriching aspects of teaching and learning, much of which has gone ‘remote’. Where’s the fun in that? Remote is a poor proxy for learning. Understandably, some kids didn’t bother, and others do not have the technology, emotional support or physical space at home to access materials. They are being let down and social inequalities widen.

So back to school and, yes, thank you Nick Gibb.

Yet the road to full re-opening has been arduous. It has taken months of campaigning by groups such as UsforThem to reach this stage. One remaining obstacle is that of naysayers within my own profession, as represented by some unions, who are apprehensive. A shrill contribution to the TES forum, a platform for discontent, likened returning to the classroom to being ‘thrown to wolves’.