Learning lessons

Today is Thursday — the day on which I return to school for the first time in almost four months. For one day, I will be shepherded round the site and given half-an-hour with each teacher. This will therefore count as the promised “face-time” which the government has promised. At every point in the school, there will be a “strict one-way system” to get around the site, and distancing will be enforced at every opportunity.

I will not be allowed into most of the school, and, indeed, most of the school will be as deserted as it has been for four months, with only a tiny fraction of each year-group in at any one time. The only people I will be able to really meet are teachers in classes or the small numbers of fellow pupils who happen to be in the same room. Unnerving and dispiriting an experience it may well be, but at the moment, after months of relying on laptop screens, it is the only real education I or any secondary school pupil could hope for.

I am only allowed this short break from “virtual” learning because I am sitting exams next year. After  GCSEs and A-levels were cancelled in March, the government has been keen to ensure that next year’s exams go ahead, although there is a growing chance they will be delayed , in order for students to “catch up” on the work they’ve missed. The Westminster consensus has been that those with exams next year are the priority for schools. The vast majority who have no exams are of secondary importance.

It seems then that exams are the only reason for secondary schools to exist, and that teaching each course is their only function. All the other school years, especially those who would be enjoying their last weeks with friends, have barely been mentioned. The focus has been on ensuring that exam material is covered. Ministers have rolled out clichés about “inspirational teachers” and even, laughably, the need for the return of a” good traditional teaching method”  in which all pupils face the front of a classroom to make sure they “pay attention to the teacher”. The banality of the government’s approach to re-opening would be comic if the consequences of their incompetence weren’t so appalling.

The hope is that, when schools open up, the work ethic will return for most children as they get back into the classroom. But it’s wishful thinking. I’ve been lucky. My flow of schoolwork has been steady. All the same, I can’t pretend that my attention levels have been as high, or that the same volume of information has gone in. Trying to force teenagers to listen to the finer points of blood characteristics or how to make soluble salts has never been simple at the best of times. But when these lessons are coming through a computer screen, and distractions are even more readily available, learning is tough. Any psychologist knows that young people’s minds are especially susceptible to routines. Now the structure of school life has been stripped away, the consequences won’t just been seen in their grades.

The recent mass outpouring of anger on the streets of Britain is an indication of the pent-up frustration felt by millions of people growing up in Britain. It is not surprising that, when you instantly disrupt or end a young person’s education, stop them from seeing any of their friends, make them stay at home — their parents’ home — deprive them of all fun and leave them with the hopeless prospect of a country riddled by unemployment and led by a slumbering government that seems to have no interest in their future prospects, then there is going to be some serious disquiet among a whole generation.

The government has shown a remarkable lack of empathy for the concerns and prospects of young people. It has also failed to acknowledge the equally impressive restraint of those most affected by the economic consequences of the lockdown. Yet I can’t see this calm lasting; mass protests about statues are just the beginning of a growing wave of resentment at the unnecessary sacrifice of the economic future of millions. What is now a culture war will soon morph into a political one.

Yet perhaps at a deeper level, the damage of the school closures will never be measured in a chart, never spoken of at a press conference, and never measured by a think-tank. There will be the irreparable loss of those who have been working throughout their school careers towards these summer months, only to have it taken away from them. The loss is not just felt in school, but in all the interactions that take place around it — a generation has been deprived of its upbringing. A government that cannot recognise this long-lasting sense of loss has failed on a profound level.

The government was able to open zoos, Nike shops, and pubs. But not schools. The prospect of Gavin Williamson being in charge of any part of my life was never an enticing one, but his failure to draw unions, parents, pupils, and teachers into a combined effort has been a shining failure. Even after the Second World War, there was no prospect of education being so sorely disrupted.

Every developed nation knows that its future depends on those it educates. This summer, the system has not just been badly handled. It hasn’t functioned at all.