A “Nightingale moment” for children is needed, providing increased funding, extra training for teachers and counsellors in every school, the children’s commissioner for England has said.
Invoking the gargantuan effort taken to build Nightingale hospitals for thousands of Covid patients in a matter of weeks, and the £35bn furlough scheme to save jobs, Anne Longfield said children’s recovery from missing months of 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, she said children had made a huge sacrifice during the pandemic, and she urged the government to step up support for the most disadvantaged, warning that a generation could be lost without radical intervention.
Longfield called for investment in mental health support for children as schools reopen, a commitment to provide young people with the technology to study remotely in the event of local lockdowns, and a focus on vulnerable teenagers who are at risk of never returning to education.
“The government needs to be bold, and on the sort of scale that saw hospitals built in weeks, and workers paid in furlough, to make sure no child is left behind. If not, they risk losing a generation for good. The stakes are simply that high,” she said.
“Kids have not had their Nightingale moment during the crisis, but if it comes at this stage, where there’s a determination to do things differently for children and help the most disadvantaged fully in life, that would be a great Nightingale moment to have.”
Longfield, who has statutory powers to protect children’s interests, said she hoped the crisis would act as a wake-up call, having exposed gaping inequalities in children’s lives.
After schools were closed across the country from March, she welcomed the prime minister’s £1bn catch-up package to support learning, much of it focused on one-to-one and small group tutoring, but she said it was not enough.
“We need a step-change in ambition to reverse the increased disadvantage that the pandemic has caused. We need a bold plan to reduce the disadvantage gap and help kids catch up academically. But also we need the right mental health support to help them make the transition back into the classroom. That means training for all teachers and counselling in every school.”
Many of the 57,000 people who have died from coronavirus in the UK will have been grandparents, whose grandchildren will be returning to classrooms having suffered bereavement.
Calling for proper monitoring of attendance and exclusions “to ensure kids don’t fall through the gaps and end up out of school and out of mind”, Longfield added: “It’s that moment for a complete change in priorities, that not only puts children at the heart of recovery but really understands that if we are going to level up for the whole of society, we have to start with children.”
Children should never have to face the same level of disruption to their education again, and further closures should happen only as a last resort, the commissioner said. “It’s an absolutely vital couple of weeks for kids. It’s a big moment. They’ve seen life starting to come back to some sort of normal around them. They’ve seen parents going back to work, restaurants opening up, shops opening up. They’ve had to watch that go by. Now is their time.”
Longfield, who is due to leave her post in February after six years, was a vocal critic of the government’s failure to get children in England back to school before the summer holidays.
Asked about this month’s exams fiasco, which resulted in a humiliating government U-turn and the departure of two senior civil servants, Longfield said the dramatic downgrades had left children feeling “hopeless”.
The government should use the forthcoming spending review to maximise investment in disadvantaged children, she said. She called for focused intervention for 120,000 vulnerable teenagers with a history of being excluded from school and going missing.
“After five months out of school, they may now feel school is not part of their lives. They will be the kids who are more vulnerable to violence and grooming and gangs. They will need particular support and encouragement to go into school, and real intervention.
“I’m talking about youth workers, working with the police, working with schools and social services to make sure they have a package of support and protection around them so they don’t fall out and become lost.”
Spending on youth services in England and Wales has been cut by 70% in real terms in less than a decade.
There have been concerns that the number of children going missing is increasing, and incidents of violence are on the rise.
“I’m told by police that county lines [when gangs groom children to travel across counties and sell drugs] is now back to business as usual. At the beginning of lockdown, that was disrupted. The whole model of using kids as commodities to deliver drugs could not be used. You could see where kids were travelling around. I’m told now that as lockdown has been relaxed, the drugs market is as buoyant as ever.”
Senior figures from the exams regulator Ofqual, including its chair, Roger Taylor, are expected to face a grilling when they appear before MPs on the cross-party education select committee next week.
Sally Collier, who resigned as Ofqual’s chief executive in the wake of the exams crisis, will not be among them, though one committee member said she might yet be summoned if Wednesday’s session left pressing questions unanswered. The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, is due to appear on 16 September.