When the Covid-19 crisis finally ends, schools must never return to normal | Education | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/apr/07/when-the-covid-19-crisis-finally-ends-uk-schools-must-never-return-to-n
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/fc47fde29d33a7a4af73a630fab800ef10551c7e/0_170_5100_3060/master/5100..jpg?width=620&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=5ebef387708a4fc
Morceaux choisis :
Despite 10 years of real-term funding cuts and ongoing fears of redundancies, the education profession has risen to the Covid-19 challenge
However, decisions and support from the Department for Education have been slow, reactionary, and leaked to the press rather than first shared with the profession. They have not been collaborative. School and college leaders, local authorities and trade unions have filled the gaping hole vacated by central government.
No adult or child will be untouched. When we come out of social distancing and isolation, children and young people and their families will need help to manage mental health, self-esteem, friendships and relationships.
Education will need to change, too. We cannot simply return to the status quo. A third of teachers are actively thinking of leaving the profession within the next five years; there is a teacher and school leader recruitment crisis. Education support staff roles have been cut to the bone and teaching assistants, supporting the children with the most complex special needs, are being paid insultingly low wages that do not reflect their importance.
When we go back to school everything will be different – and it must be different. We need to ask ourselves the fundamental question: what is the purpose of education?
We must end the education “market” and the game playing, end the practice of schools competing against each other for pupils, results and league table places.
If we don’t recognise now the vital importance of an inclusive education system and the positive impact it can have on developing a fairer society, then, I fear, we never will. We must use the situation we are faced with now to end child poverty and inequalities in education and the wider society.