Why Gavin Williamson can’t afford to mess up the reopening of schools

Ministers are expressing confidence that all children will be able to return to school at the start of the autumn term in England in September.

Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, announced that schooling will be compulsory, with parents facing fines if their children do not attend without good reason. The 15-pupil class-size limit will be scrapped. Instead, children will be grouped in “bubbles” – in classes in primary schools, and year groups in secondary.

However, the plans could be disrupted by the growing prospect of more local lockdowns to combat flare-ups of the coronavirus. In Leicester, schools closed from Thursday as part of the city’s shutdown.

Long-awaited guidance from the Department for Education says that if a school has two confirmed coronavirus cases in 14 days, groups of pupils, a whole year group or even everyone at the school might have to self-isolate at home for two weeks. Mobile testing units will be dispatched to schools after an outbreak, with local health protection teams advising on self-isolation measures.

Williamson admitted that his proposals could be disrupted by local lockdowns, which could close individual schools or all of them in an area to all but the children of key workers and those from disadvantaged families. He said that schools should offer remote learning to ensure children do not see “any form of disruption”. The guidance says schools should “have a strong contingency plan in place for remote education provision by the end of September”.

However, this will raise fears that children from poor families could again fall behind, further widening the gap between them and pupils from better-off families.

Ministers hope that bringing back schooling for all will encourage parents to return to work. But plans to stagger school opening times could cause problems for working parents with children in different age groups.

Although Labour backed a return to compulsory schooling, teaching unions reacted cautiously. They called for a “plan B” if a full return was not safe, and expressed concern about year group “bubbles” of more than 200 pupils.

There is a lot riding on a successful reopening in September for Boris Johnson and Williamson, who might not survive in his post if it goes wrong. They were forced to abandon plans for all primary pupils to return to the classroom before the summer break when they proved unworkable under social distancing rules. The humiliating U-turn angered many Conservative MPs, and led to charges that the government had got its priorities wrong by allowing zoos, theme parks and pubs to reopen before schools were open to all pupils.

In September, ministers will want to give priority to schools, even if that means reimposing other lockdown restrictions in order to keep R, the average number of people infected by someone with the virus, below one.

As one Tory MP put it: “We cannot afford to get this wrong a second time.”