Tackle lost learning now or risk wider inequality – Jayne Dowle

And even so, the Government seems unable to take practical steps in the right direction, except an airy promise to start re-opening schools fully from March 8. Top of the list should be a vaccination programme. Labour is right to urge the Government to vaccinate all teachers and school support staff during February half-term.

Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir Starmer reminded Mr Johnson that re-opening schools must be a national priority and necessary steps put in place. Two weeks to prepare? Covid-secure premises already available? Surely it shouldn’t be out of the question.

It won’t happen of course. However, it’s not unreasonable to hope that teachers, plus other critical workers, are vaccinated by the end of April, as well as all over-50s and younger adults with underlying health conditions.

Writing in this newspaper last week, Kate Green, the Shadow Education Secretary, also argued for a rota system for pupils so that all year groups spend several weeks in the classroom then several weeks at home.

It would be a pragmatic approach but it would require full co-operation from teachers and teaching unions, and direct leadership from the Government. With respect, it’s the kind of plan that’s relatively easy for the Opposition to envisage, but fiendishly difficult to set in motion for this set of Ministers.

However, the Prime Minister and his hapless Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, should be taking the very real concerns of Labour, academics, teachers, parents and pupils seriously instead of lurching from crisis to crisis.

As a parent and a school governor, with a primary deputy headteacher for a brother-in-law and many friends working in education, I think I am qualified to make an assessment here.

It seems to me that the Government is failing our children and young people because it has a complete blindspot when it comes to joining up school, parental responsibility and the need for most parents to work to earn money to keep their families alive with a roof over their heads.

Thankfully, those ridiculous ‘Stay Home, Save Lives’ government adverts showing a mother holding the fort have now been withdrawn. Ironing, cleaning and home-schooling – how absolutely galling for the millions of women absolutely fraught with anxiety and exhaustion trying to do it all. Whilst the men go out to work, presumably?

Caroline Nokes, chair of the Parliamentary Women and Equalities Committee, blamed “institutional thoughtlessness”. What a sad indictment. Back in the real world, most of us accept that this vision is regressive in the extreme and not the case actually, in many modern families. However, such lack of empathy and understanding comes from the top.

It’s one of the greatest ironies of our age that people-pleaser Mr Johnson so often gets it seriously wrong; he does not want to be seen to put the lives of teachers before the lives of the elderly and care home residents in the vaccine queue.

Don’t be fooled. The strategy of rolling out inoculation starting with those most likely to suffer serious consequences and require medical intervention isn’t big-hearted. It’s designed to ensure that the NHS is not overwhelmed by demand from those least-equipped to fight coronavirus by dint of age and/or ill-health.

We know teachers have been demonised by a succession of Conservative governments, a situation not helped by obdurate teaching unions entrenching their own position. The coronavirus crisis has brought out the worst in both sides.

However, if all goes to plan, this first stage of the vaccination programme will soon be drawing to a close. February half-term might be out of the question, but by the end of this month surely there should be no argument left for not putting teachers at the top of the queue.

This is about far more than administering a quick-fix injection. Lost learning, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies reminds us, and the lack of urgency or national debate on how to address the problems lack of schooling is stacking up is deeply worrying.

The necessary responses will demand complex, hard and expensive solutions. But the risks of spending time and resources on this issue are far smaller than the risks of spending too little and letting wider inequalities take root for generations to come.

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