The chaos in English schools at present is deeply significant. A tiny proportion of pupils are meant to have returned to school: half of them have not. Parents do not trust that it is safe to return their children: the lack of confidence in the government is quite staggering.
I am told by a teacher that the quality of teaching for those that have returned is seriously inadequate. Social distancing has required that the old days of a teacher standing in front of the class and barking out instructions has returned. And when a child does not understand that instruction teaching staff cannot get near enough to them because of social distancing rules to see what they are doing, and so help them to overcome their misunderstanding. It is inevitable, as a result, that significant problems will result.
What is more, at the school where the teacher in question is working there is not enough confidence to buy school books for the autumn term as yet. The belief that what will be required are home working books is, apparently, very strong. Some of that may be pragmatic: the chance that all children will be able to return to buildings simply not capable of meeting social distancing requirements is low, and so home working is likely to be necessary for a long time to come. But some of the reason is that there is real concern that a second wave of coronavirus will have hit by then and so schools will not be able to function on site anyway: lockdown will have returned instead. What is certain is that there are no funds to plan for both on site and home working options, and so everything is on hold.
This is serious in itself, of course. That there is a real chance that many children and young people will need an additional year at school to overcome the educational disadvantage that they will have suffered is very real, but I have not seen it discussed, as yet.
But it is also indicative of the chaos in wider society that we have not got close to acknowledging but will have to once shops attempt to reopen, and that is that the whole of the infrastructure of our society is premised on the logic of cramming as many people as possible into a small space, and we simply do not have the option of changing that for a long time to come.
It may be that shops will reopen. But the queues outside many of them will be horrendous, whilst the chance of any retailer making much money will be low because of the additional cost of imposing social distancing and because of the small number of people who will be allowed in to shop at any time, which is bound to restrict the amount of trade.
The same problems will, of course, be seen in many other situations as well.
Coronavirus has not only already caused 60,000 premature deaths in the UK, many of which could have been avoided. Precisely because we have still got nothing like control of the virus, unlike many other countries, its continuing cost is also going to be phenomenal: the collapse in labour productivity in schools, shops and so many other environments is not a concern for just a few weeks, as the government clearly hopes. It will instead be an issue for a considerable time to come. And in that case our ability to do so many things previously taken for granted can no longer be presumed.
Of course, I could be wrong: Covid 19 might just fade away.
Or we may get an effective vaccine.
Or, much more unlikely, track and trace could work.
But I am not as yet at all optimistic on any of these fronts and see no reason to be so.
In that case it appears wise to think completely differently about the way in which our society will have to work in the future, which is very different from the way it has done in the past. And although I now see lots of plans coming out for the post coronavirus economy, and I am involved in some such projects, what few seem to assume likely is a fundamental change in labour productivity, which is likely to be radically lower in many sectors than it has been for decades. And until we get our heads around what that demands (and I am only beginning to do so) the chances of working out a true plan for recovery are very limited.
Whilst the chance of working out the consequences of our having massively lower productivity when many other countries do not is something no one seems dare think of, although it is very real.
I thought that coronavirus was going to be profoundly significant sometime before the government did. But I admit I underestimated its impact. I now think the future is almost unknown to us. To say that we will have to rethink almost everything is to understate the scale of the issues that we are facing. There is no normal anymore.
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Just to note that in my adopted home of the Netherlands, where we do have a competent and well organised government and state, schools partially reopened in May, and as of this week, my daughter is back in five days a week.
The excess deaths and misery experienced in the UK is just the beginning. Economic and social chaos are looming large. We are witnessing in the UK and USA what happens when cynical rhetoric seizes power at the expense of logic and competence.
Boris’ cabinet has never had a grasp on coronavirus, and they never will have. They are utterly incompetent at every level.
Their instincts may be to protect wealth and the economy above all else, but in mishandling the situation so bad they’ll have the opposite effect. You’ll see European states that Tories would deride for being social democratic, bloated governments etc coming out of this with much better economies than the UK, which, ironically, will be leaving the EU, as it entered, as the sick man of Europe
Denmark is doing well too…
That is really scary
Why? Because their economies will recover and ours will not
Benz0 says:
“…Their instincts may be to protect wealth and the economy ….”
Hmmmm…. if that’s the case, they clearly have a very limited view of what constitutes ‘the economy’…..
@Andrew Crow
I think they know that “the economy” includes everyone and everything (though some of them probably don’t consciously recognise that “everything” includes the environment), what’s driving their thinking is the way they /prioritise/ different parts of the economy. Their mindset is essentially tribal, and the foundation of their thinking is that their “tribe” deserves all the help that can be provided, while those outside their “tribe” deserve nothing (or the bare minimum, the least they can get away with providing without suffering mass uprisings and so forth). This is a pretty common conservative mindset, driving conservative politics around much of the world. It’s extremely evident here in Australia, despite our conservative government managing to not make such a horrible mess of its pandemic response – emergency support was focused on businesses right up until it became immediately apparent that the crisis would make enormous numbers of people unemployed; even when that aspect was realised, the government’s support was /still/ business centric and ideologically driven, up to and including providing zero support for universities which are suffering massively from the loss of international students.
Tribalism isn’t solely a conservative failing, but one of the things that distinguishes the conservative mindset from a more liberal/progressive mindset is that the in-group/out-group distinction is far less important – the conservative mindset has very little empathy for the out-group, reserving most of that for the in-group, whereas the liberal/ progressive mindset spreads its empathy around more evenly.
Thanks Simon
On school reopening, I can’t understand the government’s position?
By coming up with a date, they just set themselves up to fail. My partner is a teacher and it was clear from early on that it was a non starter. To keep within safety guidelines, school would only be able to provide a very basic service. It is neither providing education or child care (so people can get back to work). It’s looking like it will be the same come September.
Yet the government ploughed on with the idea until they had to make a U-turn.
It’s like the 100,000 test by the end of April target. They set themselves up to fail again but that time they just fudged the statistics.
It’s like they want to be seen to be proactive and in control but then reality comes crashing in.
I think we may be in this for the long haul unless a vaccine is found.
New Zealand is Covid 19 free, but they have had to totally isolate themselves to do it. The tourist industry is dead. As soon as they open up again, it will be back. Globally, cases are on the rise.
We need an International Health Service, never mind the NHS. Global inequality is going to bring us all down.
New Zealand and Australia are working towards opening up travel and trade between themselves (the term of art at the moment is a “bubble”) – the thinking is that this bubble can be expanded to include other nations that have gotten the pandemic under sufficiently tight control. Greece is apparently pushing for the same kind of thing with Australia (at least for tourism), though I don’t know how that will unfold in practise.
We seem to be moving towards a world where nations that responded to the pandemic successfully can “reopen” in a limited way within the “bubble” for international trade and travel, and the rest of the world will be left to its own devices.
And we are not in any bubble
Agreed.
In social housing development we are struggling to complete what we started and unable to start the new schemes. Everyone is getting hot under the collar that performance figures will be hit but my view is exactly this – we need to develop the capacity to potter along for now and just keep going best we can.
The risk is that some hot heads will not get used to this and use it as weapon in some sectors because it will feel like failure. Well, as you say, get used to it.
And the answer is simple and always was – local testing capacity so that those who need to opt out to recover do so and leave the rest of us to get on with it until we catch it.
Let’s be clear – all of this blanket lock down business could have been avoided. Johnson & Co have a lot to answer for.
Indeed
For me, it’s the huge amount of unknowns that is worrying and, when you factor in this incompetent government, it’s becomes scary. Life will change but everything is so much up in the air at present that there we cannot start to adjust and deal with that new life.
Many, many questions but very few answers (or, in some cases, those answers are being ignored and the answers given are wrong).
One positive – almost halfway through the week.
Craig
Wren Lewis made the excellent point in a recent blog concerning risk acceptance and the potential impact on economic recovery. In Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, surveys show a much higher level of trust in government than the UK. This means that individuals and organisations will accept a higher level of risk in those countries than in the UK. Would anyone buy any HMG policy, let alone a second hand car?
[…] have already discussed the end of what we have thought to be normal this […]
Why can we not just accept that we will have to pay a bit more tax to fund public services ?
I can recall when I first started work the standard rate of income tax was 33%. Surely an increase to say 22% would not be too painful for most of us ?
It may be in heavily indebted households
OLd Codger asks:
“…Why can we not just accept that we will have to pay a bit more tax to fund public services ?…”
Partly because the political narrative for four decades has told us that tax is bad…governments waste all the money we ‘give’ them….public services are wasteful and inefficient and the private sector is better at everything…. and a lot of other old tosh which doesn’t seem at all obvious from the evidence of our eyes and lived experience, but none the less still appear to believe.
Eventually perhaps we will have political leadership which can lead us in a more progressive direction, but I think we have to survive Brexit first …..that may focus the attention of the electorate, but If you are truly an ‘old codger’ as your nom de plume suggests, don’t expect to live long enough to see the change manifest. 🙁
It is unsurprising to see that there is still no real plan for going forward for anything, it is unlikely that there will in fact be any plan.
I am still not able to find any facts about how many people have died OF Covid-19 rather than with in the UK.
Still no word on how those affected by missing out on a growing number of weeks out of education will be able to catch up.
I did find a comparison between this year’s excess deaths and excess deaths over the past 20 years or so, but it was from a moody website, if any commenters here can find reliable stats I would be very interested to see them.
I am also concerned about deaths caused by the fallout of Covid-19, those related to mental health, suicide, failure to be treated for cancer etc.. I see no plans for any of this.
If there is no sign of a”second wave” by mid August, I can see most restrictions being lifted, including the 2 metre distancing.
When is the deadline for a Transition Period extension by the way?
My son’s primary school has worked very hard to get ready to accept him and his year 6 classmates. The class divided into two groups of 15, each attending for two hours a day, mornings or afternoons, with lots of cleaning of surfaces in between. And the rigmarole of trips back and forth for socially distanced drop off followed returning for the pick up what, 90 minutes later. About 80% are attending (say, 12 /15 in each group) but I’m not sure how much school work they are getting done. In parallel, the school is still looking after about 20 “key worker” children from all other years, also split in two groups. Year 1 and Year R are not back yet, but they will also be divided into each two small groups, morning and afternoon. And no sign of when the other four years might return. And this is a single-form entry school of around 200 pupils. How will secondary schools with 1000+ pupils work in the new normal?
Quite how this is meant to work come September is not entirely clear to me. But in the meantime we can’t just write off another three months. Some thought needs to be given to organising some form of continuing education provision over the summer. It is quite a while since we have needed children to be free from schooling over the summer months, to help get the harvest in.
I can’t see that happening…
Our government is failing a great many children, as it is the rest of us
Many children take some time to catch up after the summer holidays. Six months off would mean effectively a year of education written off.
I’m not holding out much hope for our basket case of a government doing very much of anything, apart from congratulating themselves on their “astonishing” “world-beating” leadership, as they keep marching the survivors towards a Brexit cliff edge.
I suspect local authorities won’t have the capacity to do much either. So who? Charities? Schools themselves, just as the teachers are looking forward to a break after working through Easter and the half terms? Motivated groups of parents?
Johnson says it’s going to happen
But he has not said how
I think he simply thinks teachers are infinitely available at his whim to achieve this without any consideration of their contracts, lives or simply fatigue
“Johnson says it’s going to happen”
Hmmm….well that does rather seem to be his modus operandi; say it’s going to happen and then pretend it has.
Before long we’ll see how this applies to Brexit since the Coronavirus pandemic is over now, according to the Johnson method of government as wish fulfilment. Actually I think Johnson has been trying to pretend that Brexit is done already. The little boy who wanted to be king of the world has grown up to be Prime Minister of Never never land.
Every night before I go to sleep I’m going to try saying “I don’t believe in government special advisors”.
I’m not sure it’s entirely fair to run a government in this way. We should have been told in Johnson’s election manifestos that we were changing from the Lewis Carroll model to the to JM Barrie model society.
Sans a vaccine, a tight long lockdown, and a very slow, careful, inch-by-inch exit is the only way to squeeze down on the presence of the virus to low risk levels; then with a local, fast, structured test and trace operation, we can begin to allow sufficient activity to operate a living economy. Only the first part: long lockdown, the slow exit, test and trace wherever needed at point of need; allows the possibility of a viable economy to follow.
I think that is what Scotland is currently trying to do (and the r value is now circa 0.6-0.8). Sans vaccine I do not understand how else it can be done. I do not claim public health or epidemiological expertise, but that is what I see. I have no idea what the British Government is doing, or trying to do, or even whether they know themselves.
It is hard to see what is wrong with your logic
It is not the logic that will be followed