Labour slams 'wasted summer' of inadequate support for pupils in England

The new shadow education secretary has launched a stinging attack on the government’s approach to schools in England during the pandemic, criticising ministers for a “wasted summer” with little holiday catch-up provision and no “plan B” for the autumn in the event of a surge in infections.

In her first interview since taking up the post, Kate Green spoke frankly of her fears for children in the “Covid generation”, most of whom will not have been in school for six months, and the urgent need to “make good” the damage done to pupils during the lockdown.

Green, who took over the post last month after the controversial sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey, also warned against government plans to fine parents in England who keep their children off school in September because of continuing health fears.

In a wide-ranging interview, the former chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group went on to urge the government to intervene to stop universities going bust and defended Labour’s long-held target to get 50% of young people into higher education, which was recently dumped by Boris Johnson’s government.

On schools in England during the pandemic, Green accused the government of issuing late and sometimes contradictory advice to headteachers, who were not adequately consulted and were then left to get on with it themselves.

“We’ve said all along that the government needs to set up a task force, which is cross-party, with professionals and experts, so there’s a proper plan in place to ensure that children are safely back in schools or childcare settings.”

Green, who is MP for Stretford and Urmston in Manchester, also highlighted an urgent need to invest in better digital access for all pupils in England, with the continued threat of local lockdowns and possible school closures requiring some home learning over the coming months and perhaps beyond.

Access to a computer and the internet has been a key factor determining how much work pupils have been able to do at home. “We know that some children have been able to undertake much more home-based learning because they’ve had access to the resources to do so. Other children have been able to have very little home learning at all.

“The government needs to look at what sort of digital access funding it’s going to put in place,” said Green. “The promised laptops that were going to be delivered by the end of June have still not been fully rolled out and in many cases don’t provide all the functionality that a child needs to learn.

“It’s necessary to deal with the immediate crisis but I think it’s actually the way that learning is going to go in future. It’s going to be a mix of what goes on in the classroom and how that’s supported at home.”

Green said it was vital for students to get back to lessons, but also stressed the need for mental health support. “I am very worried about this Covid generation, that if we don’t step in very quickly with excellent learning and extra social and emotional support for this generation of children that the attainment gap widens and their life chances are significantly compromised, and that affects them for years to come.”

She said the £1bn catch-up programme launched by the government should have been made available earlier to pay for structured activities during the holidays to prepare children for a return to school in September. “It has been a wasted summer,” she said.

“We have to make good the damage that has been done by the last few months and we need to have a plan about how we’re going to continue to protect those children over the next couple of years, as this virus clearly hasn’t gone away.”

Green said she was fully behind plans for a compulsory return to school in September, but rejected fining parents for unauthorised absences. “It’s not going to be in any way to the benefit of children in low income families to be fining their parents. The issue is about parent confidence and the need for parents to be reassured that their child will be safe at school.”

As part of that, she said schools and parents needed to be confident that effective testing and tracing would be in place when term starts. “And the government needs to have a plan B for what will happen in a local area where at least for a time children have to be back out of school. I don’t hear them talking about that at all.”

Green said the government’s record on child poverty was “absolutely shocking” – up from 3.5 million children in relative income poverty when Labour left office in 2010 to 4.2 million and rising. And she called on the government to help parents who lose their jobs over the summer to access free school meal (FSM) vouchers for their children.

The government initially refused to extend FSM over the summer holidays, but was shamed into a U-turn following a remarkable intervention by the Manchester United and England footballer Marcus Rashford, but Green said some families will still miss out.

“The cut-off to apply for the FSM scheme over the holidays has passed,” said Green. “There’s no provision in place if mum loses her job tomorrow. Those children are being let down by the government.”

Green, who previously served as the shadow minister for women and equalities under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, was also critical of the government’s recent university announcements. Last week ministers unveiled plans for emergency loans for institutions facing bankruptcy but warned that not all providers would be prevented from “exiting the market”.

“I think the government needs to step in and protect all of our universities,” said Green. “I find it absolutely astonishing that we’ve got a universities minister and a secretary of state for education who apparently want fewer people to go to university. I’ve never come across anything like that before.”

The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, and the universities minister, Michelle Donelan, have both given speeches in recent weeks seen as hostile by many in the sector, in which they rejected targets for getting young people into higher education, and said university was not necessarily the best route to success.

“We’ve got a very narrow-minded approach coming from the government,” said Green, “that really seems to see universities more as part of a sausage machine into the labour market, without understanding that a good quality university education opens up so many prospects, and that narrowing that down and reducing opportunities for people to participate in that isn’t going to be in the interests of individuals or indeed of our long-term economic success.”