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A “Nightingale moment” is needed for children, providing more funding and additional training for teachers and counselors in all schools, said the Children’s Commissioner for England.
Invoking the mammoth effort to build Nightingale hospitals for thousands of Covid patients in a matter of weeks, and the £ 35bn license plan to save jobs, Anne Longfield said the recovery of children from the months that Missing school would take up to a year and would have a profound psychological impact.
In an interview with The Guardian before millions of pupils return to classrooms in England next week, he said that children had made a great sacrifice during the pandemic, urging the government to increase support for the most disadvantaged, warning that a generation could be lost without radical intervention.
Longfield called for investments in mental health support for children as schools reopen, a commitment to providing young people with the technology to study remotely in the event of local lockdowns, and a focus on vulnerable teens who are at risk of not. never go back to education.
“The government must be bold, and on the kind of scale that hospitals were built in weeks and licensed workers paid, to make sure no child is left behind. Otherwise, they risk losing a generation forever. The stakes are just that high, ”he said.
“Children have not had their Nightingale moment during the crisis, but if it comes to this stage, where there is a determination to do things differently for children and to help the most disadvantaged in life, it would be a great Nightingale moment.” .
Longfield, who has legal powers to protect children’s interests, said she hoped the crisis would act as a wake-up call, having exposed the huge inequalities in the lives of children.
After schools closed across the country starting in March, he welcomed the prime minister’s £ 1 billion upgrade package to support learning, much of which focused on individual and small group tutoring, but said it was not enough.
“We need a radical change in ambition to reverse the growing disadvantage that the pandemic has caused. We need a bold plan to narrow the disadvantage gap and help kids catch up academically. But we also need the right mental health support to help them transition back to the classroom. That means training for all teachers and counseling in all schools. “
Many of the 57,000 people who have died from coronavirus in the UK will have been grandparents, whose grandchildren will return to the classroom after griefing.
Calling for proper control of attendance and exclusions “to ensure that children don’t fall through the gaps and end up out of school and out of mind,” Longfield added: “It’s that time for a complete shift in priorities, that Not only does he put kids at the heart of recovery, but he really understands that if we’re going to level up for the whole of society, we have to start with kids. “
Children should never have to face the same level of disruption in their education again, and additional closures should occur only as a last resort, the commissioner said. “It’s an absolutely vital couple of weeks for the kids. It’s a great time. They have seen life begin to return to normal around them. They have seen parents go back to work, open restaurants, open stores. They had to see it happen. Now is your time. “
In a question and answer video with parents posted Friday night, Boris Johnson emphasized that closing schools again would be a last resort. The prime minister said: “We are very hopeful that even if there are local closures, which I am afraid there will almost certainly be, because we are expecting more local peaks, schools should be the last part of society that I want to close again.” .
Longfield, who will step down in February after six years, was a vocal critic of the government’s failure to get children in England back to school before summer break.
When asked about this month’s testing fiasco, which resulted in a humiliating reversal of the government and the departure of two top civil servants, Longfield said the dramatic cuts had left children feeling “desperate.”
The government should use the upcoming spending review to maximize investment in disadvantaged children, he said. She called for a focused intervention for 120,000 vulnerable adolescents with a history of being excluded from school and missing.
“After five months out of school, they can now feel that school is not part of their lives. They will be the children most vulnerable to violence, grooming and gangs. They will need special support and encouragement to go to school and a real intervention.
“I’m talking about youth workers, working with the police, working with schools and social services to make sure they have a support and protection package around them so they don’t fall off and get lost.”
Spending on youth services in England and Wales has fallen by 70% in real terms in less than a decade.
There has been concern that the number of missing children is increasing and incidents of violence are increasing.
“The police told me that county lines [when gangs groom children to travel across counties and sell drugs] now it’s back to normal. At the beginning of the confinement, that was interrupted. The whole model of using children as commodities to administer medicines could not be used. You could see where the children were traveling. Now they tell me that as the blockade has been relaxed, the drug market remains as dynamic as ever ”.
High-level figures from exam regulator Ofqual, including its chairman Roger Taylor, are expected to face questioning when they appear before MPs on the inter-party education select committee next week.
Sally Collier, who resigned as Ofqual’s chief executive in the wake of the exam crisis, will not be among them, though a committee member said she could still be subpoenaed if Wednesday’s session left urgent questions unanswered. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson is due to appear Sept. 16.
