45b. THE COVID-SECURE CLASSROOM IS A CLASSROOM UNFIT FOR PURPOSE - Further analysis in light of the DfE announcement
Any argument for the return to secondary schools before there is either a vaccine or significant change in the risk such a return presents to students, staff, their families, and the wider community any of these three groups come into contact with, is based on an underlying justificatory premise which is fundamentally flawed: that a return to school will benefit students both educationally and emotionally. The flawed premise is based on the following five assumptions about what a return to school will mean:
1) Students can receive effective teaching again from their teachers
2) Students can get important group and personal feedback from their teachers
3) Students can have full access to educational resources again
4) Students can see and learn from their peers again
5) Students can get a much-needed sense of normality back in their lives.
Along with a sixth key assumption underpinning them all:
6) That none of the above are possible in the current lockdown via online learning.
Here I intend to demonstrate that not only is the sixth assumption false, but that none of the five assumed benefits of returning to schools will actually be the case in any “Covid-secure” school environment following the UK Government’s “protective measures in education and childcare settings” guidance published by the Department for Education on May 11th, making the risk of returning, and the efforts required for it to happen, simply not worth the cost.
All quotes herein are taken from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-implementing-protective-measures-in-education-and-childcare-settings/coronavirus-covid-19-implementing-protective-measures-in-education-and-childcare-settings
To unpack assumption (1) – what is “effective teaching” – and put it in the context of the claim (6) – that effective teaching cannot take place online – incorporates assumptions (2), (3) and (4). The notion of “effective teaching” is deeply contestable but a generally agreed idea involves the setting and assessing of activities which enable students to access and understand key knowledge and skills, or apply and develop such skills or knowledge, within the distinct discipline being taught in ways that are engaging, make the knowledge or skills “stick”, and allow the students to make further progress within the subject, stretching and challenging their pre-existing knowledge base and taking them to a place far beyond their initial starting point. In the current online learning scenario lockdown has enforced, the argument is that our best efforts as teachers on online platforms is somewhat diminished compared to what we could do in the classroom.
So what it is the classroom offers that the online scenario does not in terms of setting and assessing activities defined as “effective”?
I believe when people think of a return to the classroom they think of the classroom before it was made “Covid-secure” and imagine the ability to be more interactive with their classes. Setting group work; answering questions as and when they arise; broadening out the range of activities from online research, essays, workbooks or YouTube videos, etc. to more creative classwork. I believe they feel they will be able to be more responsive to their students’ learning needs as they see in real time what is being understood and what students are struggling with. Maybe even just the instantaneous feedback of having the class there to react to the things that are said even if all they do is stand before them lecturing? Importantly, they imagine being able to mark work quickly, use in-class assessment-for-learning techniques, chat to the pupils and identify issues then and there, and use all the wonderful resources of a fully stocked classroom – mini whiteboards maybe? Sugar paper and big felt tipped pens? Card sorts and textbooks. Or unleash the creativity that comes from interaction – drama exercises, songs, games. The buzz of a happy and productive classroom is a wonderful thing, and in that big mixing pot of differentiated abilities we see our students learn from each other and teach each other as much, if not more than we teach them.
But this vision of the happy and productive classroom is simply not the classroom we will be returning to. And unless teachers, students and their families want to sleepwalk the country back into a Covid-crisis, we need to recognise that fact immediately. In the “Covid-secure” classroom:
· We are told PPE is “not recommended” for teachers “where social distancing and other measures can be maintained.” While the guidance from government claims – without any evidence to support it – that teachers “will not require PPE…even if they are not always able to maintain a distance of 2 metres from others” in practice the guidance recommends every effort go into ensuring such social distancing at all times. This means a teacher in the “Covid-secure” classroom is not navigating the room, going from table to table and leaning down to give prompts and help to their students as they work. They are standing well back and leaving their students to get on with the work by themselves.
· Students themselves will be socially distancing two metres apart at all times too, so choosing to do collaborative groupwork over individual tasks would make little sense. Any collaboration they do would have to be at a distance and goes against the government guidelines which ask for “minimising contact and mixing” and tell us to “reduce contact between people as much as possible”.
· Classes will be split into a maximum of 15 students to allow social distancing too, meaning that teachers will also not be able to speak to whole classes at one time either.
· We have also been instructed that we should “prevent the sharing of stationery and other equipment where possible” and be “limiting the amount of shared resources that are taken home”, meaning that those extra resources the old classroom might have had cannot be easily, or responsibly, used (a mini whiteboard is never necessary enough to risk the wellbeing of staff, students and their families), nor can we really be encouraging the taking home of work to mark. Indeed, a teacher working safely cannot be expected to mark the potentially infected handwritten papers of fifteen to thirty students so the only safe way for them to submit work will be digitally, which raises its own problems – do all students need a school laptop or computer, and how is that possible without sharing the equipment? Are keyboards going to be hygienically cleaned after each lesson? And if the work is being done online anyway…why have we all risked our lives, and the lives of others, to set it in such unnecessarily close quarters?
Perhaps it is assumption (5), and the less academic and more emotional part of point (4) – restoring that sense of normality to our pupils and allowing them to see each other, and us, once again, that makes the return to schools so important? Except, the “Covid-secure” school is far from normal. The “Covid-secure” school sees “young people and staff where possible, only mix in a small, consistent group “ and ensures each “small group stays away from other people and groups”. Our students will not be seeing all their friends and teachers again and going back to their old lives in the classroom and on the playground, they will be seeing fourteen other people and a handful of teachers, two metres apart at all times, using “the same classroom or area of a setting throughout the day”. Classrooms cold and unpleasant from “using natural ventilation (opening windows)” and propped “doors open…to limit use of door handles and aid ventilation” reached through unfamiliar “one-way circulation” or by placing “a divider down the middle of the corridor to keep groups apart as they move”, with staggered breaks and lunch to ensure “groups should be kept apart as much as possible” and that they “especially do not play sports or games together”. Beyond the absurdity of students having to somehow, impossibly, “clean their hands on arrival at the setting, before and after eating, and after sneezing or coughing” yet ensure that “toilets do not become crowded by limiting the number of children or young people who use the toilet facilities at one time”, this will not be the school environment which many of our students miss. This is a creepy dystopian distortion of their old memories. As it also will be for any staff hoping to reunite with old colleagues once schools reopen when we remember that social distancing applies to us to and the edict to “stagger the use of staff rooms and offices to limit occupancy”.
So students will not be getting (5) – that much needed sense of normality back in their lives – or the social aspect of (4) – seeing their peers again. They will not have (3) – the full access to all their educational resources again, and any peer-learning or group/personal feedback from their teachers or effective teaching (assumptions (2) and (1)) will be limited to what can be achieved in a socially distanced, “Covid-secure” classroom. Which brings us to assumption (6) - that effective teaching, important group and personal feedback from teachers, full access to resources, peer learning and normality are not possible while schools remain closed via online learning.
We have already seen that the type of teaching we would be able to do in “Covid-secure” school settings is massively diminished and that it will not involve all year groups (meaning many students will still have to continue being taught online anyway, even if some return to school), but even for those who can return, there will be “shielded” or “clinically extremely vulnerable” staff and students unable to return, “clinically vulnerable” staff who have to still “work from home where possible”, and a recognition in the guidance that “for secondary schools and colleges” this is just “face to face support for students” to “supplement remote education”, which will remain the bulk of what teachers and students do. So it is worth acknowledging that remote online learning is here to stay until there is a vaccine or significant change in our vulnerability and it is therefore imperative that teaching professionals and students get good at using it whether schools reopen before September or not.
But when we couple all this with the diminished “face to face” scenario of the “Covid-secure” secondary classroom (as opposed to the pre-Covid classrooms we remember), we have to ask the serious question of whether there is any actual benefit we get in person under these conditions that cannot be achieved online.
In my own experience during these weeks of online teaching, the answer is no. Be it via forum functions, full-scale audio or visual meetings, or one-on-one email messaging or chat features, students and teachers, students and students, and teachers and teachers, can interact with one another online arguably far more than they can in the socially distanced classroom or workplace. During the period of lockdown my own department has set collaborative work for students from years 7-12, held live lessons with a range of year groups, held debates and discussions, even enjoyed the inessential classroom banter that helps develop relationships and a sense of wellbeing between staff and students in the moments between the learning. Just today, before writing this essay, I listened to a Year 10 student present on a topic he has been researching in epistemology, and saw submissions coming in for my colleague of collaborative presentations from our shared A-level class. I have held a seminar with my Year 9 classes on the argument from miracles for the existence of God, and criticisms of that argument from David Hume and Maurice Wiles, correcting misunderstandings and responding to student needs in “real time” while my colleague did the same with one of his GCSE groups and held a revision workshop in preparation for an upcoming assessment. I have also chatted to my form about the music they have been listening to during lockdown and helped individuals with their homework via email. You can be as creative as you want to be online, and as interactive, the more you get used to this way of teaching and learn how to do it. It’s been a trial by fire, very much chucked into the deep-end, but as we learn, we get better, and so do our students as the novelty wears off and they start to take things seriously. The key to evolution is to adapt and survive. Rather than year for the old normal that may kill us, we ought to be accepting, for a while at least, that this is the new normal our students should be getting used to.
I believe teachers can teach very effectively online, and that we can give important group and personal feedback to our students. I also believe students can collaborate, peer-teach, peer and self-assess online, as well as see the full spectrum of their peers – both within online school settings and through other social media, far better than they will be able to in the socially distanced classroom. While there is certainly an issue with access to resources for those students without computers or good internet connections, this is a problem of social inequality which could and should be resolved through providing households with access to ICT/broadband, etc. where needed. Importantly though, we must remember a return to the “Covid-secure” classroom is not a return to full access to our resources for everyone either (some schools do not have sufficient ICT for their pupils either; this is not just a family-to-family issue) so the online situation may not be better, but it is in no way worse on this front. The online classroom is far from perfect, but it has no more disadvantage than the “Covid-secure” classroom would have with all the added changes and obstacles, and the online classroom comes with the far greater advantage at this perilous time of keeping staff, students, their families, and all who would come into contact with them were they to go back to school, safe.
If the educational and emotional argument outlined, and debunked, above does not give good reason to reopen schools, then it seems that schools are being asked to reopen before it is safe to do so merely so that the parents of young people will be able to get back to work again – an economic argument rather than an educational one. If this is the case then we need to ask some serious questions about why teaching staff, and their families, are being sacrificed in this way so that people can go to work to do jobs we have already deemed inessential and shown that we can function without for several months already. No one should be going to work before it is safe to do so – including the parents of those children they want to send back to school for no obvious educational benefit. And if people really must leave their homes to go back to some jobs, what is needed is childcare, not schools, to enable this. Perhaps easing the lockdown so that family members can interact again, or trusted friends. If a child’s risk of transmitting Covid-19 to their teachers is so minimal that our lives can be risked by their leaving lockdown to mix with us and each other in the wider community, then surely the risk these children pose to uncles, aunts, cousins, and even grandparents, is far smaller if these children contain their exposure only within the confines of their family instead of mixing with every other child in the local catchment area?
To re-open schools before it is safe to do so is to mistake the purpose of schools and ignore how fundamentally transformed a “Covid-secure” school will be from the schools we knew before. With no obvious benefit for returning to the socially distanced classroom before it is safe to do so, we must, as both teaching professionals and as a wider society, ask the question of what we are trying to achieve with the push to reopen our schools? I believe I have shown here clearly that whatever it is, it cannot be for any educational or emotional benefit, and until such benefit can be demonstrated then the justification on which the whole flawed idea rests fails.
Author: D. McKee
(You can buy my new book AUTHENTIC DEMOCRACY: AN ETHICAL JUSTIFICATION OF ANARCHISM on ebook now from Amazon, or direct from the publisher HERE)