Education: Class sizes need to be smaller for safe phased school return, says EIS Edinburgh chief as a 'decade of cuts' impacts Edinburgh schools

Nicola Sturgeon announced last week that, subject to confirmation, the youngest primary school children will return to full time schooling on February 22, as Scotland remains in lockdown until at least March.

She will give an update on February 16, as she also announced all children under school age in early learning and childcare will return.

Pupils in Primary 1 to Primary 3 will be likely to return with some older pupils who need to complete national qualifications in school premises allowed back into school.

However, Edinburgh Secretary for the EIS Alison Murphy has said that the Scottish government will need to ensure that the ‘vast majority’ of classes in Edinburgh which are already ‘full’ are made smaller to guarantee a safe return.

Commenting on the ‘knock-on effects’ of large classes in the Capital, Ms. Murphy said it was pragmatically harder to physically distance and have proper ventilation as well as it being harder for pupils to receive ‘individual attention’ after the ‘trauma of lockdown’ with large groups.

She added: “Fundamentally, everyone wants schools open but what we want is schools open safely and we have real worries in Edinburgh particularly around the fact that we will have a lot of classes where there will be a lot of students- a full class with maybe two or three adults- teachers and PSAs- and it will be really difficult to physically distance even between the adults let alone between the adults and the kids and then the kids and the kids.

“The vast majority of classes in Edinburgh are full.”

"If we could make the classes smaller, it would be a win win because the kids would be getting more individual attention and we’d be able to have the mitigation- so it would be much better educationally and from a health perspective.”

The Edinburgh EIS are planning to meet up today and tomorrow to discuss matters internally within the union locally and nationally.

They plan to write to Edinburgh City Council more formally within the coming week to draw out plans surrounding class sizes and guarantees for shielding teachers as well as more support for children who cannot come into school.

The union also plans to call for more supply teachers to be offered work to deal with large class issues.

Ms Murphy said: “We know we’ve got supply teachers who are looking for work- we want them to be offered work and use that work to try and reduce the sizes of the classes.”

Ms Murphy went on to say that Edinburgh currently does not have the budget to provide smaller classes so the EIS are calling for the council to ‘draw down’ money from the Scottish government to be ‘ring fenced’ for staffing and resources.

"Given where we are, they council has made a good a fist of it but we shouldn’t have been where we are,” said Ms Murphy, "For example, last year, they voted for a cut for nursery teachers so the very group that are there to support aren’t there so in many ways that’s the problem.”

Ms Murphy also commented that the EIS would like to see the Closing the Gap team – set up by Edinburgh City Council to support children impacted by lockdown – expanded and kept going to ensure support is not temporary for those in need.

An Edinburgh City Council spokesperson said: “We are happy to meet with teaching and staff unions to explore any suggestions they may have for ensuring staff safety when pupils return to school.

"The health of everyone working in our schools is paramount and we will continue to follow Scottish Government and Health Protection Scotland guidelines when they reopen.”

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