Mind the Gap

Everyone knows that a key effect of the pandemic has been to widen the gap between the achievements of more and less favoured pupils. If you’re learning in lockdown it matters whether or not you have IT equipment, and the time and space in which to use it properly. So it makes sense to look for some way of compensating for this difference. In other countries, government would confer with teachers about how best to do this. not here. We know that the answer to everything is to buy a lot of money to a firm. So there’ll be private tutors (who can’t be practising teachers) who will swoop in to make the difference.

Only they won’t. This is an urgent crisis, but we know learn that this tutoring won’t be available until Spring 2021. No explanation offered by our rulers, but you have to guess that it’s dictated by the firms getting paid the money, that the optimum way for them to provide these resources and to make the necessary profit involves a few months delay while they get everything in place. that’s the cost of getting in the best. But it totally fails to grasp the nature of the problem, and the necessity for urgent action. In the grand scheme of things, the profit and loss accounting of government, “the needs of the pupils” comes a long, long way down.