Covid-19: Impact on Education

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Monday 15th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petitions 564696, 548778, 573621 and 564209, relating to the impact of covid-19 on education.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. The first petition is to do with cancelling GCSEs and A-levels in 2021 and replacing them with coursework and teacher assessment, and was created on 29 December; the second is about allowing teacher-predicted grades for BTEC students; the third is about keeping schools closed until May; and the fourth is about closing schools in all tier 4 areas.

Clearly, over the last four or five months, the situation has been incredibly fluid, so for some of those petitions—two in particular—circumstances and events have moved ahead of them slightly. However, I do think this a valuable opportunity to have a discussion about the impact of covid-19 on our children’s education in a more general sense. We could not get a much broader debate, and I imagine that colleagues and I will find it very difficult to keep our points concise, because this is such a multifaceted issue, and our children have been impacted in so many different ways by covid-19, but I will attempt to do so. I will just cover four or five key lessons that I think we need to take away and some of the thoughts that I have.

My first point is to do with the danger of making generalisations and assumptions about how a child may or may not have found schools being closed, particularly based on, say, the socioeconomic background that they may come from. There is some evidence, produced by the Sutton Trust, that suggests that children from more deprived backgrounds have been particularly badly impacted by the closure of schools compared with children from other areas, but we should not necessarily assume that, and we should not assume that a child in a different situation found it any easier. I have spoken to a number of families whose children have come from a variety of backgrounds and who, for whatever reason, have found it particularly difficult, and their mental health has been particularly impacted. In coming to those sorts of generalisations, we should not lose those individuals’ stories, because, in some senses, no one child’s experience of the past year has been the same. We need a response that, as far as possible, caters for that individual child. That is the first point I wanted to make.

Secondly, on mental health, research published by MIND showed that 73% of those at school feel as though their mental health has deteriorated over the past year. There is a massive challenge in front of the Government; there is a massive challenge in front of schools; and there is a massive challenge in front of young people, to try to make up for some of the learning loss that has clearly happened over the last year. Another point that I would make is that I think we should be careful in the language that we use. There is a big challenge in front of us, but we should be aware that the anxiety that many young people feel at the moment is already very significant. Sometimes the words that I see in the media, such as “lost generation” and so on, can fuel those anxieties to an even greater extent. Yes, there is a significant challenge in front of us, but we can overcome it, so in a sense, we need a degree of positivity and a can-do spirit. My concern is that a daunting situation may become even more daunting if we are not careful about the language that we use.

The Minister will be aware from my position on the Education Committee that I speak very frequently about special educational needs. The national special educational needs and disabilities review has been delayed, but if there can be an advantage from that delay, it is that it allows us to properly look at the way in which the pandemic has had a different impact on different children, including those with special educational needs.

That must include not only those with education, health and care plans, but those who might not have one of those plans but still have learning disabilities. Dyslexic and dyspraxic pupils would be two examples. They have not been eligible to come into school most recently, and some of those individuals have struggled with online learning because of the unique way in which many of them learn. Not having that personal engagement has often made it much more difficult for them to learn and some, I fear, have fallen behind more as a result.

When we talk about those with perhaps more complex and significant needs and disabilities, something else that we need to bear in mind is their mental state, and how they often struggle with transitions. The movement from working online to back into school, to online and then back into school again can have a profound impact on their mental state. Many of them have been eligible to keep on coming into school, but many have not, and there has often been good reason for that. A therapeutic approach to help them with the transition from what might seem like quite an unsettling period for them is also very important.

I am encouraged by what I have heard about the tutoring programme, and how, when we think about the ways in which our young people can catch up from any learning loss, there have been some SEND specialists feeding into that. That was encouraging, but it would be brilliant if I could hear more today about how that is working in practice.

My next point is to do with exams. One of the petitions called for a cancellation of exams. Bearing in mind the circumstances, I do not think that there was any alternative. It was the right decision to cancel those exams, but I also believe that it was a regrettable decision. I think we were left with no choice, but it comes with its own negatives. I believe that exams should be here to stay. I do not think that this should be used as an opportunity to question the role of exams in the medium to long term. I believe that they continue to be the fairest way, often, of assessing pupils.

We should also think about those young people who actually quite like exams, and find that exams work for them. A lot of those children have learning disabilities. I talk as somebody who has dyspraxia and dyslexia. When I was a 12-year-old, I had the reading and writing age of an eight-year-old. I ended up catching up, and did have my struggles at school, but I actually used to quite like exams because I was an unconventional learner. I did not do well in the classroom. I did not go at the same pace as everybody else. That revision gave me time to consolidate my knowledge and surprise in my exams. I really would not have wanted to have been at school over the last year, so we should think about how those children could feel as though their chance to flourish has been taken away.

On the teacher assessment that we will have this year, some schools will have these tests that will feed into the overall assessment, but these tests are not mandatory. Perhaps they should have been mandatory. Having spoken to the Minister about this before, my understanding is that the teachers at a school will have a degree of flexibility over this, and the approach will not necessarily have to be the same for all children. It might be that some children in a school can take a test while others do not.

I would also like to think that pupils could feed into the process. If they felt that having a test would mean that their teachers were in a better place to make an accurate assessment about their progress, I think their views should be taken into account. I go back to the point that I made about dyslexic pupils. I have spoken to two headteachers at dyslexic schools, where all the pupils are dyslexic, and it is interesting that both of those schools have taken a decision to have tests for all pupils. That is useful in providing a sense as to how it may be that all those children could be negatively impacted by this.

Another point I would like to make is about children who have English as a second language. I know that in my own constituency, there are many pupils who come under that bracket. I have spoken to headteachers in my constituency who are concerned that the level of participation in some of the online learning has been lower in those communities, and also that pupils’ English has actually gone backwards throughout the time that schools have been closed. When we are thinking about catch-up, that aspect needs to be there also.

I was encouraged by a meeting that the Education Committee had recently with the catch-up commissioner. I have had a number of conversations with headteachers in my constituency recently who have said that when we are thinking about catch-up, flexibility needs to be at the heart of it, and that teachers and headteachers, who know their children better than anybody else, should be able to take decisions that they believe to be in the best interests of each individual child. The catch-up commissioner made it very clear that that will be the case.

There are lots of things that we will have to work out, particularly with catch-up schools over the summer, such as how they will interrelate with the holiday food and activity programmes, and how that will work. It is about having that flexibility with catch-up, so that teachers and headteachers can make those decisions. That goes back to what I said earlier: we should not make assumptions about how each child has found lockdown. There is an element of truth in the idea that clearly some home environments are more conducive to online learning than other environments. There is a reality there. Some children do not have their own bedroom or a quiet place to work, and they might have parents who want to help with their learning but, frankly, cannot help as much as they would like to. Some children have a different background and have their own space and parents who are able to help them, but we should not assume that. Sometimes parents might be able to help but cannot, because they are working round the clock. We do not know what their circumstances will be.

In a nutshell, and in summary, my key points are these. First, we should not generalise or make assumptions and, as far as possible, we should approach each individual young person and try to cater to their needs. My second point, unsurprisingly, is about children with special educational needs and the different ways in which this has impacted them. As I said, it is so important that we get SEND right. It is right morally, it is right for them, and it is also necessary for our country, because we do not want to lose their talents. This pandemic has in some ways made the situation harder for them. We should also think about those children who the way we have been assessing has perhaps worked against; they have been losers in that.

When we are thinking about how covid has impacted our young people, we need to be sensitive in the language that we use and conscious of the way in which their learning, but also their mental health, has suffered. It will be difficult to catch up, but they are our children, and we will do whatever it takes to support them, so there needs to be a degree of positivity there as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Hunt]

It is still a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, as it was at the start. I thank the Minister for his response, which was comprehensive and certainly addressed many of the points that I raised. There is a problem with some petitions in particular, in that there has been a lot of water under the bridge, but a lot of hon. Members dwelled on the petition on exams and assessment. I hope that many of their concerns have been alleviated.

I appreciate that there was a consultation and that a decision was made that tests should not be mandatory, but I hope that means that any children who could benefit from a test do not feel that they are being shut out. If a child and/or their parents go to a teacher and say, “Look, we really do think that our child could benefit from having a test,” I hope that the teacher will be responsive and listen. I understand why it is not compulsory, but I hope there will be flexibility.

I hope that teachers exercise flexibility as well and are sensitive to the fact that not all children are the same, not all of them learn in the same way and some benefit more than others from exams. I am encouraged by a lot of what I have heard from the Minister, and from the recovery commissioner when he came to the Education Committee, about giving teachers flexibility and respecting that they often know best for their children and that the individual child needs to be at the heart of all this.

In terms of the teaching profession, the issues of recruitment and retention, which were issues before the pandemic, are obviously even greater now. I have been encouraged by some of the stats I have seen. The number of applications has gone up. In many senses we could say that the behaviour of certain unions has not helped, but in other respects we have often seen teachers acting heroically, in terms of the work they have put in to get their schools ready. Certainly, schools and teachers in my own constituency have worked to provide support beyond the academic. I mentioned Copleston High School in east Ipswich, which has set up a community pop-up shop to help children at the school, and some of the work that has been done is exceptional. In some senses, I think the way that people perceive the teaching profession has gone up, but those issues around teacher recruitment and retention are obviously very important and need to be looked at.

I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been to be an education Minister over the last year. No Government have been in this position before, and of course it is very easy to criticise. It is very easy to say, “Well, in hindsight, you should have done this and you should have done that.” That is not to say that the Government have not made mistakes. It is not to say that, on occasion, they could have been better with the comms. It is just to say that I think it is important that we recognise the huge challenge of what it must be to be an education Minister during this pandemic.

When I talk to parents and teachers, there have been occasions when we have had difficult conversations. They have criticised the Government, and they have criticised various things that have happened—January being one case, the algorithm being another—but I have to say that in the last couple of weeks I have had two conversations with two headteachers who have been incredibly complimentary about many of the things that have happened.

When we talk about the laptops getting out, bearing in mind the scale of the operational logistics, sadly there will be examples when not all that equipment got to where it needed to be, but I would also say that more often than not it has, and I have spoken to headteachers in my constituency who have been incredibly grateful for that, including the headteacher of Stoke High School, which probably has the most deprived catchment in Ipswich. He has had hundreds of laptops delivered, which have benefited children at that school. That is something that I also think needs to be recognised.

I know that there is a bit of a debate about the National Education Union, and I have to say that I probably sympathise with the interpretation of that particular issue by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis). This has been an incredibly difficult situation for pupils, for teachers, for schools and for the Government, and I think that at various times the National Education Union could have acted in a much more constructive way, but unfortunately it has not. Because of that, I think it has made a difficult situation even more difficult, and I think it has been motivated by political point-scoring far too much. I sometimes question whether schools would have been open at all over the last year if it had had its way. They probably would have been closed, and they would still be closed now.

When it comes to teachers being prioritised for a vaccine, I have to say that I was sympathetic to the arguments, particularly before it became clear what a huge success our vaccination programme is. I thought we just needed to get the schools open. If doing that helps the situation, let us go down that route. Publicly, I have sympathy for that view. I had one school in my constituency approach me to say, “Look, logistically, we think we can do it. We’ve got all the resources. If we can get the vaccine, we think we can vaccinate all teaching staff in Suffolk within two weeks.” I was open to working with that school. What was really interesting is that this all ended up in the Mail on Sunday, and there were some quotes in there from the NEU, totally dismissing it.

Here is an example of people in the education sector wanting to roll their sleeves up and say, “Right, let’s do this,” and just being shot down by the NEU, which effectively said that all teaching staff need both doses. That was my interpretation of what it was saying. If it had had its way, there would not be any schools open until every single member of the teaching staff had had two doses—how long would that take?

There has been anxiety from teachers in my constituency about the fact that they have not been prioritised for the vaccine. They have made it clear to me that, heading up to 8 March, that was one of their key concerns, but I think that with each day and each week that goes by, and given the remarkable progress that we are making as a country in the number of people we are vaccinating, those concerns are being alleviated. As we vaccinate more people in their 50s, and soon those in their 40s, most teaching staff who would have been more vulnerable to the virus have been vaccinated as part of the general process anyway. I think that is to be recognised, as is the fact that we are doing so much better than almost any other country in the world.

On the whole, we need consistency and clarity going forward, particularly on next year’s assessments, as the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) mentioned. We should provide clarity and consistency as early as possible. I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North said about having a national test to get a much better understanding of the extent to which there has been learning loss, and for each child, because we cannot make assumptions about what their particular experience has been.

We have a huge challenge ahead of us, but I am confident that the Government are very aware of that. I hope that the petitioners who signed these petitions, though perhaps not looking at this debate and thinking—