Why trust is key over schools reopening – The Yorkshire Post says

It would also enable teachers, parents and pupils to begin to return to some semblance of normality after a traumatic three months that will have had a lasting impact on the lives of many students.

But it will only happen if the Government works with LEAs, academy trusts and others to build a consensus so that teachers, and also families, are reassured that their health is not being put at risk by any undue haste.

Public confidence is already low – lifting the lockdown is going to be far more problematical than its original imposition – and is being compounded by Education Secretary Gavin Williamson’s tactless approach.

One of the Cabinet’s weakest communicators, and there are many to choose from, every promise by the Minister to ‘reassure’ the country about his guidance to open up schools to more pupils from June 1 now has the opposite effect.

The consequence is 95 per cent of teachers expressing concern about the Government’s plans and Calderdale Council becoming the first LEA in Yorkshire to advise its schools not to open more widely until they can be confident that children and teaching staff can return to classrooms safely.

Collaboration has to be the way forward, rather than the confrontation with the teaching unions that Mr Williamson appears to be seeking, to mask his abject lack of policy statecraft.

A starting point would be the wisdom of resuming nursery classes that would compel youngsters to start learning in an alien environment where close interaction with their peers, and teachers, would be forbidden under social distancing. Mr Williamson, where’s the evidence that this is in the best interests of all those concerned?

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