A generation of children have been let down by Covid-19 and Labour won’t stand for it – Rachel Reeves

The wider risks from this virus are serious. However, it is so important that children are back at school so they can catch up with their studies and be reunited with their friends, which is vital for their mental and physical health.

As a mother of two primary school age children, I fully understand the concerns of families about catching this virus. But I believe there are harmful risks to children’s futures if they are kept away from the classroom any longer.

I have remained in touch with all the great work going on at local schools, including Dixons Unity Academy in Armley, which ran a food bank to help the hardest hit in their community.

However, headteachers have been worried about the impact of the closures. On the eve of lockdown, one told me: “I feel so worried about having to close. For so many of my children, school is the safest place to be.”

Even before the pandemic struck, the learning gap in England between rich and poor primary school children had widened alarmingly.

According to the Education Policy Institute, disadvantaged primary pupils are now more than nine months behind, with the gap widening for the first time since 2007.

A separate study from before the end of term in July by the National Foundation for Education Research suggested teachers had been able to cover only 66 per cent of their usual curriculum for the academic year.

The study found children were three months behind in their studies after lockdown, with boys and poor pupils the worst hit. That has to change.

Education is a deeply personal issue for me. When I was at secondary school, our sixth-form was two pre-fab huts in the playground. Our library was turned in to a classroom. I had brilliant teachers, support at home and worked hard.

However, one of the A-levels I studied had never been taken before by anyone at my school. Would the Government’s dodgy algorithm have given me the A grade I needed to get my place at university? I doubt it.

When a student wrote to me about the results of friends at his West Leeds school, I wondered whether my MP would have helped me when I was 18.

I was determined to get the Government to think again. These are life-changing moments for young people, which is why the Government’s woeful failure to get a grip of this issue is all the more appalling.

Parents and teachers need to have confidence in those in charge. The series of U-turns and policy disasters from the 
exam-grades fiasco to whether children should wear masks in secondary school have dismayed even previous loyal Tory MPs, let alone the rest of us.

The moving intervention from footballer Marcus Rashford apparently shook an “unaware” PM into a U-turn to ensure 1.3 million children would not go hungry over the summer and miss out on free school meal vouchers.

The travesty over exam grading scuppered any last claim this Government had on competence.

After days of dithering by Boris Johnson and his Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson that caused untold anguish for students and missed places at university, the Education Secretary dumped his disastrous A-level algorithm.

It was not as though he had not been warned. Ministers only had to look at the U-turn over exams in Scotland to see the looming problem or to hear the warnings from the Education Select Committee in July.

Instead, they did nothing before finally bowing to the inevitable by relying on teachers’ predicted grades.

The buck should stop with the ministers for their catalogue of terrible decisions, U-turns and the confusion that surrounds almost everything they do.

However, Johnson and Williamson alienated teachers and parents and undermined public confidence by pushing officials out of the door as they shirked responsibility.

Out went the Department for Education’s top civil servant Jonathan Slater and exam regulator Ofqual’s boss Sally Collier as officials were forced to carry the can for Government mistakes.

Ministers need to listen to ensure children’s return to school is as safe and successful as we all want it to be.

The Government has to give more clarity about the plans for future exams. Labour has already called for next year’s A-level and GCSEs in England to be pushed back to mid-summer to help students catch up.

Ministers must urgently look at helping parents, because Covid restrictions mean that many schools will be unable to offer all the breakfast and after-school clubs on which they previously relied.

This is a crucial time for a generation of children whose futures are threatened by the incompetence and poor leadership of a Government that has let them down.

We must do everything it takes to nurture our young people, invest in their futures and giving our fantastic schools the chance to shine, especially in this challenging time.

Rachel Reeves is Labour MP for 
Leeds West and a senior 
Shadow Cabinet Minister.

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Thank you

James Mitchinson