Why vulnerable children need support now over education – Fiona Spellman

We shouldn’t need a global pandemic to expose this inequality but perhaps it could be the trigger that brings about real change.

For years our education system has been dominated by short-term thinking which penalises our poorest children. Now, Covid-19 has presented this Government with an opportunity to truly level up education across the country. To do this we need a fundamental shift from cure to prevention.

Watching the daily press briefings, it is difficult to envy the role of Ministers in the current crisis. From PPE, to testing, to clarity of communications, there is no shortage of criticism.

Almost every part of our economy and society are asking the Government to go both further and quicker to support them, and the list of demands is getting longer all the time.

Much of what we are seeing from the Department for Education is a reaction to the immediate challenges created by the school closures, with a focus on those students who are closest to sitting exams.

Year 10 students are being prioritised to receive laptops, and there is rightly much debate over how to ensure the predicted grades system for GSCEs and A-Levels is fair to students from low-income homes.

We all care deeply about what happens to the current year’s exam cohorts, but the truth is that we need to place much greater emphasis on the students coming after them.

Currently huge sums of public money are being spent in the wrong places in education, attempting to compensate for or correct educational failure rather than prevent it.

The increasing rate of exclusions from school in many disadvantaged areas is a prime example. Most excluded children have unmet needs, and yet early, preventative support is often not available due to a lack of appropriate resources and, sometimes, insufficient training in schools.

The best school leaders in disadvantaged areas are not clamouring for intensive, academic programmes in the first week the schools reopen for their most vulnerable students.

Instead, they are focusing on how they can reintegrate children in ways which support their long-term needs socially, emotionally, and academically. Love is one of the most valuable things teachers can provide, and yet it’s the thing we often value the least. Just as nursing isn’t all about medicine, teaching isn’t all about curriculum.

There will be some students who need significant support to readjust to the routines and expectations of school when they reopen. The more pressure is heaped on schools to deliver rapid academic catch-up programmes, the more likely that large numbers of students and teachers will struggle.

We need to ensure that schools are supported to meet the full range of students’ needs on entry back to school. Without this, we risk a huge spike in exclusions, which will cost the system far more in the long run and squeeze the funds available for preventative support down the line.

In recent years, many talented teachers and school leaders have been driven from the profession by a combination of high workloads and low morale, underpinned by an accountability system that rewards and punishes the wrong schools. Many more were teetering on the brink even before Covid-19 hit. If we do not support our teachers properly now, we risk losing a generation of our best school leaders from the places that need them most.

The real divide in our country is not between North and South, but between rich and poor. The key factor which influences a school’s position in the league tables is the proportion of pupils who are disadvantaged and the length of time for which they have been disadvantaged.

Long-term deprivation is not something schools can be expected to overcome without significant additional help. Those of us who know this have a duty to say so.

If we allow a return to business as usual when schools reopen, I fear huge numbers of the most vulnerable children will end up being excluded from schools that are unable to meet their underlying needs, and many teachers will be driven from a profession that no longer enables them to prioritise the things that matter most.

Covid-19 is creating ever-expanding budget pressures in education just as the public finances are coming under unprecedented strain.

If we can invest in early, preventative support for children when they need it, our education system has a chance of emerging from this crisis stronger than before. If not, we are risking far more than next year’s exam results.

Fiona Spellman is CEO of North of England education charity SHINE.

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