Tories make announcement and call on schools to prepare – then provide no information
Last night, Boris Johnson announced that schools in England will be closing from tomorrow afternoon as a result of the coronavirus pandemic – but only partly.
Johnson said that the government is requiring schools to make arrangements to continue classes for the children of ‘essential workers’, to ensure that those in vital jobs are not kept away from work by the need to care for children no longer going to school.
But more than twenty-four hours later – and less than twenty-four hours from the start of the closure – teachers and sources in the National Education Union have told the SKWAWKBOX that they still do not have the list of which jobs are ‘essential’ that they need in order to begin identifying the children they need to accommodate.
One teacher said:
Schools are in turmoil. No one knows what’s happening and all our staff have been asked to report for duty Monday as normal! What’s the point of the ‘closure’?
There isn’t even a list of relevant job types yet – or if there is, nobody seems to have received it.
The government has been utterly useless. Other countries have already closed their schools so there is already a model.
Our government seems in disarray. It’s like Boris Johnson is being deliberately vague again, just like he was about pubs and restaurants.
SKWAWKBOX view:
Yet again Johnson and his sidekicks have made announcements without preparing for them or even being able to explain how they’re supposed to work.
He and his party are a mile out of their depth and utterly unfit to provide the leadership the country needs in this huge crisis.
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