Just as children are facing the coronavirus crisis today, I grew up during another time of crisis — the economic recession of the 1980s.
In my home town of Rotherham I saw the fallout of that major recession impact my local community and even my family. Alongside so many other people working in the steel industry, my father lost his job, too.
But during all of that time, however hard it was for our community, local children like myself were in school and learning.
Education and the teachers at Oakwood Comprehensive school were giving me the start I needed to make a success of my life. Our futures weren’t being derailed.
Former Education Secretary Justine Greening discusses the situation regarding the reopening of schools after the coronavirus pandemic forced them to shut its gates
Priority
Not this time though. The coronavirus crisis has shut down our schools. And we can’t allow it to shut down our children’s futures with it.
We’ve seen an impressive national effort to support our NHS; now it’s time for a national effort to support our schools.
Education can be the great leveller — it’s the building block that all of us need to be successful. When schools are shut it’s working-class children who suffer the most.
We know from research that even during summer holidays, some children’s learning falls back.
Coronavirus has shut down our schools but we cannot let it shut down our children’s futures, especially when you consider how quickly children’s learning normally falls back over the summer
Time out of school really matters. Every hour, every day that schools are closed is time those children either lose or have to make up.
For working-class children already behind, the longer this goes on, the greater the risk that they will be damaged for years.
Research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank pointed out yesterday that during lockdown, children from more affluent families have been able to spend 30 per cent more time every day on their education than their less advantaged peers.
It’s clear that if we are to avert a crisis in educational inequality, children need to be back in school.
Everyone understands that schools need to be opened safely, potentially at different times around the country.
But we must now have a proper plan for steadily opening them — it’s overdue.
It’s time to come up with a plan to reopen schools again – children need to be back in school – and we have to those most disadvantaged of the school shutdown first
And that plan has to put those most disadvantaged by the school shutdown first.
It means children eligible for free school meals who are likely to have an attainment gap compared with their peers getting a more advantaged start. It also means priority given to special needs children, whose parents have perhaps found it the most challenging to have their kids at home and need the most expert support.
And it means young people with the least time left in our education system, those with exams on the horizon, getting urgent help to enable them to catch up.
Crisis
If agreement can be found with the TUC on the furlough scheme and on expanding our NHS capacity at breakneck speed, then it can be found on our schools, too.
The teaching unions have taken a confrontational approach, seeming to prefer to have a political fight first and leaving solutions to the current crisis in our children’s education to come second.
But ministers and unions have to get round the table together, because children’s education is more important than a classroom stand-off.
If the challenge is that we need schools to have social distancing and there’s not enough space, let’s find a workable solution.
It’s time to find out a way to install social distancing measures within schools so they are a safe environment for children to work and play in
There’s plenty of unused office space and meeting rooms that could work as classrooms.
Opening up community centres or libraries could provide vital quiet spaces for children and older students at secondary school and sixth form colleges to be able to get back to their studying while a longer-term plan is sorted out.
There are lots of solutions out there if we look for them.
The Government must urgently coordinate a national response to support schools just as it is doing to support our hospitals and NHS.
Reopening schools is just the first step though.
Coronavirus is widening education gaps to such an extent that we need to provide extra help for the children most hit by schools being closed.
That means asking teachers who have left the profession to return to it, just as healthcare professionals have come back to the NHS in its most challenging hours.
It means asking private tutors to help our country by being prepared to re-target their work towards disadvantaged children.
Finally, we must look beyond our classrooms to also help Britain’s young people who are at the beginning of their careers.
Many in their 20s are working in sectors that this Covid economic crisis has hit the hardest — retail, hospitality, sports and leisure.
Their careers are being put on hold before they’ve even got going. We know the terrible long-term impact youth unemployment can have.
We should also be looking to support young people in their 20s trying to get on the career ladder during the coronavirus pandemic – their careers are on hold before they have even got going
Just as the pandemic has hit our country unevenly, so too it will hit economic prospects in different ways — leading to what I call opportunity gaps across the country.
Places such as Corby in Northamptonshire, Bolsover in Derbyshire, and Redditch in Worcestershire could lose up to 50 per cent of their economic growth, much more than in other areas.
Elsewhere, we already see that some sectors such as tourism are hit especially hard while others, like financial services, can weather the economic storm more easily.
The differentials — or gaps — in business opportunities are developing all over Britain and there need to be plans in place to stop them leading to blackspots where economic prospects are bleak.
Opportunity
Business worked with Government to protect jobs, and now Britain’s businesses can play a pivotal role in helping us combat the ‘opportunity gap’.
Government must also help businesses to protect opportunity, for example by giving them extra flexibility to invest more easily in skills and apprenticeships.
We can see the economic crisis coming down the track in autumn and we know young people looking for their first job will find it the hardest.
Without action, we risk the biggest social mobility disaster this country has seen in decades.
Coronavirus is the biggest disruption to Britain’s economy since World War II.
We cannot allow this to become a lost generation of young people, locked out of opportunity.
Justine Greening is Founder of the Social Mobility Pledge.