Back to school: John Swinney keeping parents waiting until last minute – Daniel Johnson

As August approaches, thoughts of all families naturally turn to the start of the new school year. But this year parents still don’t know what to prepare for.

As a parent with two school-aged children, it is both a political problem and a very personal one. We have been promised a statement from John Swinney this week but we have also been told that a final decision about a return to full-time education will not come until 30 July.

All of this leaves our family unclear about what arrangements will be for pick-up and drop-off. Nor do we know what arrangements will be put in place to maintain hygiene and stop the spread of the virus in schools. The big questions of how the school day will work and how children and teachers will be kept safe simply remain unanswered.

Parents across Scotland find themselves in this position because of the shambolic way planning has been undertaken for the new school year in the light of Covid. Up until the last week of June, the official line was that schools would be returning in August using a “blended learning model” (part-time in-school, part-time at home learning in real speak). Only to be abandoned and described as a contingency a matter of days after Swinney was seen refusing to countenance any other approach on the Sunday political programmes.

The change of plan in itself was not a bad thing, but how and why it came about, is. The problem with describing it as a ‘contingency’ is that, according to John Swinney’s co-chair of the group tasked with planning for the education system during Covid, no other plans were considered or developed. Contingencies, by definition, are options and have alternatives – this plan had none.

The other problem is that having announced the u-turn, there has been little information since. This isn’t flexibility, it is reactivity. Nor is it transparent, parents have been left in the dark. We can all accept that a final decision needs to be made closer to the time. But in advance of that final decision, the rules and procedures that would need to be followed could be shared so that when a decision was made, everyone would understand what to do to make it work.

John Swinney is a skilled politician having earned a reputation for unflappability and dogged focus on his objectives. These were qualities that served him well as finance minister but have become a weakness in education. His approach has left parents and teachers having to prepare for a new school year without knowing what the rules and guidelines will be because they do not exist yet.

Some reading this may feel this is just the knowledge of hindsight. But we have a phased approach for all other aspects of life in Scotland, why not for schools? Different models for return to schooling based on associated social distancing requirements.

All of this should have been prepared with 100 per cent return as a baseline, with the phases working to restore it if 100 per cent was not possible. In the four months of lockdown, such a plan could have been prepared. Instead we have been left with a six-week scrabble to put in to place a new plan after the previous one was ditched.

A phased approach would have let us prepare, just like it has in other aspects of life, but instead we are all left waiting.

Daniel Johnson is Scottish Labour MSP for Edinburgh Southern

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