We’re not out of the woods yet in terms of the pandemic. Disruption is still being felt in our schools, with vaccinations and exams under particular pressure

England

School attendance

On September 30 102,000 school pupils (1.3 per cent) had a confirmed case of Coronavirus, up 72 per cent from 59,000 the last time the figures were released on September 16. Overall, there were 204,000 absent students for Covid or other related reasons. That is one in seven or 13.7 per cent of pupils absent from school.

This high level of student absence, especially amongst the most vulnerable, has resulted in the new Education Secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, earmarking this problem as a major task for his team. As the highly successful Minister for Covid-19 Vaccine Deployment during the height of the pandemic and a previous Minister for Children and Families, he comes with a strong track record. We wish him all the best.

Student vaccinations

Unlike Scotland and Wales, secondary schools in England are being set up as vaccination centres for their students. The guidance provided by the NHS in early September stated that most 12 to 15-year-olds should be deemed “Gillick competent to provide [their] own consent” (1) to be vaccinated against COVID-19, despite the JCVI at that point not recommending Covid-19 vaccines for healthy 12- to 15-year-olds.

  1. The term Gillick competent is used in English Schools to override parents consent for pupils aged 12 to 15 years in specific health related circumstances such as the provision of contraception.

This has placed school leadership teams in a potentially difficult situation. One in which they could be seeing their students vaccinated against their parents’ wishes. To guard against this, parental permission is being sought in writing and where this is not available the decision to vaccinate is being left to the local health officials.

For all this provision, as our graph shows, the rate of vaccination for this age group compared to others in the UK is very low and in this age group England lags well behind Wales and Scotland.

Public examination in 2022

The Department of education has published guidelines on how the public examination for 2022 will be modified to reflect students’ loss of learning from home-schooling and grade inflation. For the latter, they are proposing that results should be reduced from their high this year to a mid-point between now and before the pandemic took hold. The intention is that in 2023 they will have returned to the level before Covid started. In addition, students will:

  • Have a choice of topics or content on which they will be assessed in GCSE English literature, history, ancient history and geography.
  • Be provided with advance information on the focus of exams to support students’ revision in subjects where there is not a choice of topics.
  • Given formulae sheets in GCSE maths and revised equation sheets in GCSE combined science and physics.
  • And the requirements for practical science work and practical art and design assessments will be changed to ensure fairness.
  • However, how this works out in practice remains to be seen. None of us are sure what bearing winter will have on the situation.

 

Quebec

There have been 25 cases of Covid reported this term across schools in the Western Quebec Schools Board.  This very low figure has not been repeated in some Montreal schools, where two had to close due to outbreaks this week. This wide variation caused the Ministry of Education to have a differentiated approach. Thus, in ten of its regions, Quebec’s primary school students aged four to five are now required to wear masks on school buses if older children are present.  Masks will be also required in indoor physical education classes when it is not possible to maintain two metres between students.

Vaccines are currently offered to all over the age of twelve. However, children between the age of five to eleven are now expected to join the scheme. This has not been universally accepted, with anti-vaccination protests outside some schools. This has resulted in the Quebec Government passing a law banning this type of action close to schools and hospitals.

 

Dubai

Schools are heading into half term and with Expo 2020 Dubai now in full swing, a sense of normality is returning.  At the expo, a global conference into the future of education is taking place. Working from the premise that the current system has been in place for 150 years and is now failing and needs to be replaced, they have brought together a host of luminaries to discuss the issue. The summit is being introduced by Mr Tariq Al Gurg, the chief executive of Dubai Cares.

Dubai Cares is impacting the lives of more than 20 million individuals in 60 developing countries and continues to play a vital role in helping achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, which aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for children and youth and promote lifelong learning by 2030.

UNESCO has reported that 617 million young people across the globe lack basic maths and literacy skills and by 2030, 200 million children will have had no education at all and only 65 per cent will have completed secondary education. Mr Gurg identifies that with the context within which we all live constantly changing with the introduction of technologies, pandemics, wars and social inequality, a new system needs to be devised that meets the children’s needs in a way that motivates them to learn.

The conference is directed at three main topics:

  • Youth, skills and the future of work
  • Innovation in education
  • Education finance

It will be interesting to hear their conclusions and then monitor the impact on our futures.

With many of the schools we work with heading into the autumn half-term, we hope our colleagues have a good break. We have heard that one of our colleagues has just read all 100 posts over a three-week period and another is moving to their own home after years of renting.  David and Louise, you will certainly have earned your break.

Take care and stay safe

George