Union members’ call for Harris Federation primaries to put off wider re-opening sparks angry response from chain’s leadership

The leadership of England’s second largest academy chain appears to have reacted with fury after teacher members of a union suggested that it was not safe to open its primary schools to larger numbers of pupils last week.

The entire leadership team of the Harris Federation, headed by its chief executive Sir Dan Moynihan, put their names to a letter which was fired off to staff during half-term accusing the National Education Union of putting out “deliberately misleading letters in order to scare teachers”.

However, the response is itself likely to be contentious, with Harris’s letter appearing to out of context from an advice paper to government on schools re-opening, and with some evidence, from  one local authority where Harris operates, that a large proportion of parents share the union’s misgivings. Harris primaries did re-open to pupils throughout three year groups last Monday.

The detail

Concerns about the safety and wisdom of re-opening primary schools to all pupils in reception, year one and year six last Monday, as advised by the government, prompted several letters sent on behalf of National Education members during half-term week.

In one, 18 teachers at Harris academies, stating that they were writing on behalf of NEU members in 15 of its 47 schools, put their names to what appears to be a quite a gentle letter to Sir Dan on Wednesday, May 29th.

In it, they began by thanking him, saying: “Thank you for the federation’s swift and responsible response to the closure of schools on March 20^th and the measures that were put in place to safely look after our vulnerable and key worker children, and the remote learning systems that have been crucial in continuing to educate all the other children.

“Thank you, too, for the response to the Government’s announcement of their intention to reopen schools from June 1^st (dependent on infection rates). Many safety measures have been considered and put into place very quickly and we are particularly pleased that the federation will allow staff who are vulnerable or living with vulnerable people to continue working from home. It is evidence that the safety of pupils, staff and indeed our wider communities, has been considered very carefully.”

The letter then stated that “we, the members of the National Education Union across the federation,” request that no school be re-opened until all measures on a union safety checklist – drawn up by the NEU, GMB, Unison and Unite - had been met.

“Current proposals to expand primary school opening from 1^st June present an unacceptable risk,” the letter added, before quoting from a report released the previous day by a group of independent scientists – the “independent Sage group” – that the wider re-opening plan was not safe.

Education Uncovered has also seen a separate letter, sent to the heads of several Harris primary schools on May 27^th and May 28^th by union reps, which made similar points, albeit more forcefully.

Headlined “It’s not safe to extend the opening of our school on the 1^st of June,” the letter said there needed to be “proper consultation on the risk assessment to make sure that everything is done to make our school Covid-19 secure”.

This “risk assessment”, said the letter, had only been received at the end of the previous week – the last of the half-term, and now staff were on half-term holiday and so there needed to be more time so that “meaningful consultation could occur”.

The letter proposed this should happen over the period June 1^st to June 15^th, which effectively would have pushed the wider re-opening back to the latter date. It also quoted the independent Sage group’s warning that it was not safe to re-open schools on June 1^st.

It added: “The NEU will support any member who concludes that returning to school is not safe and that they have no option other than to work from home.”

Harris’s response

The union’s intervention clearly did not go down well with the federation’s leadership.

Its two-and-a-half page response, dated simply “May 2020”, was signed by seemingly the chain’s entire leadership team, consisting of 11 managers led by Sir Dan.

It thanked “all teachers in the Harris Federation for your incredible support and hard work since lockdown. In addition to continuing to operate our ‘virtual schools’, every Harris academy has also meticulously prepared for next week’s phased reopening of schools across England…

“During this time, we have been constantly revising and improving measures to ensure that our risk assessment at the point of opening is robust. This includes measures which are over and above government guidance, including the provision of trauma training for all staff.”

The letter then hit out at the timing of the union’s letters, stating that the NEU “has timed its latest attempt to stop the re-opening of schools to coincide with half-term”.

It added: “Both the content and timing of the NEU’s letters – which are deliberately misleading in order to scare teachers – have created a great deal of pressure for leaders at what most of them already feel has been one of the most challenging times of their careers.”

Points of contention, including on the advice to the government

Harris’s letter then sought to debunk the union’s statements. It started by criticising the independent SAGE group.

It stated: “The letters refer at length to the ‘independent SAGE report’. What the NEU deliberately omits, is that this is NOT the actual Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) advising the government. It is just a self-selected group of individuals who decided to call themselves ‘independent SAGE’ but have no access to the national data being used by the real SAGE committee.”

The independent SAGE group, however, has been widely, and respectfully, quoted in the media. It was reportedly set up by a former UK government chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, who chairs it, and Professor Anthony Costello, director of the Institute for Global Health at University College, London and former director of the World Health Organisation. Its 10 other members also seem to have impressive credentials.

So, while it may have been “self-selected”, summing it up as a “self-selected group of individuals” appeared not to convey the knowledge and experience that this group brings to the debate.

Harris’s letter then included several quotes from a detailed report, published last month on school re-opening from what it calls “the real SAGE committee”, in which it set out the apparent educational downsides of schools continuing to be closed for most pupils.

“Comments and conclusions” from this body, said the Harris letter, “are that:

“Educational outcomes are seriously at risk, especially for disadvantaged pupils.”

“A cohort of children have experienced a shock to their education which will persist and affect their educational and work outcomes for the rest of their lives. Similarly, the current lockdown may lead to an increase in adverse childhood experiences (ACEs – for example: domestic violence, poor parental mental health, child neglect or abuse)”.

The letter included two other quotes from the report in a similar vein, as well as a reported statement by Dr Gavin Morgan, a member of SAGE, that fears about schools re-opening were “misplaced because schools are safe places”.

However, this appears to be selective quoting from a SAGE subcommittee report which, if read in full,  seemed to offer a balanced account of risks on either side of the wider re-opening debate, and which did not come down either in favour or against the idea of schools re-opening.

The report, dated April 16^th and entitled “The role of children in transmission”, said there was not good evidence on how likely children were to get infected, to pass on the virus. It said: “There is a consensus that evidence on the role of children in transmission of COVID-19 is unclear.”

“Existing evidence on the impact of school closures is inconclusive,” it added, before stating, very importantly for teachers, that: “The impact of schools-based interventions is not solely dependent on the role of children in subsmission.

“Any consideration of future measures should also account for the increased risk of adult to adult transmission in school settings, such as teacher-pupil/teacher-teacher/parent-parent contacts.

“A clearer understanding of the relative importance of these transmission patterns will help to inform options for relaxation [of school closures].”

The report also found that previous pandemics had shown that children had been “major contributors to transmission during an outbreak,” with “the cycle of the school year…known to drive measles epidemics in the pre-vaccination era”, with the swine flu epidemic of 2009 seeing cases fall during the summer holidays and then rise again during September. The report concluded, however, that “Unfortunately, we do not know how applicable this is for Covid-19.”

It was within this context that the report put forward those strong concerns about the educational effects of children missing school, as set out in Harris’s letter.

As the report put it: “It is critical to consider the wider social and developmental impacts of interventions on children – looking at the whole child and their experience, rather than solely on direct epidemiological impacts or issues in isolation.”

So it was weighing possible health risks of re-opening against possible educational risks of not doing so, rather than stating that the existence of the latter meant that there was an unanswerable case for schools to re-open.

As well as the warnings set out in Harris’s letter, the report appeared to concede that there was as yet little empirical evidence as to whether these fears were grounded in reality.

It stated: “Broadly, there is a lack of information on current experiences for children and parents – for example, in terms of: variation in the extent and quality of home/distance learning; attendance by vulnerable children and changes on child protection/safeguarding services; impact on parental mental health etc. There is also an evidence gap around the longer-term impacts for children, particularly around mental health and child development.”

Without reaching any firm views on what should happen, the paper concluded: “Any consideration of options for relaxing school closures should…bear in mind the practical challenges and implications for schools (eg additional support or equipment needed, maintenance of childcare ratios whilst social distancing etc) and public perception.”

The paper ended with an annex authored by five researchers of which the first-named was Dr Gavin Morgan, headlined “The Wider Impacts of School Closures on Children.”

This sets out a series of serious concerns. It also lists a series of “gaps” in the evidence base, including “what teaching is actually taking place at home”. The annex quotes a few times from a Department for Education paper setting out risks for children of schools remaining closed, which is referenced simply as “Internal DfE report (2020)”, and which therefore may not have been published.

After the SAGE sub-committee report, SAGE modelled a series of eight scenarios for school re-opening, each of which would, they predicted, have added to the likely national re-infection rate. However, the scenarios did not include the one the government went for in the end, and which schools across England including Harris academies have now implemented: re-opening reception, year one and year six first.

An update in a SAGE paper dated April 29^th might have suggested some increased confidence about the dangers to children of returning to school. However, its conclusions remained tentative.

It stated: “Evidence remains inconclusive on both susceptibility and transmissibility of children, but balance of evidence suggesting both may be lower…there is limited evidence about transmission from children, with some leaning towards lower transmission from children.”

Other aspects of the Harris letter

Returning to Harris’s letter, this attacked the NEU’s suggestion that risk assessments “were not properly consulted on”. It said there had been “plenty of discussions with staff about the types of risk being covered,” and that the union had “advised their reps and members not to engage in any consultation about re-opening”.

A suggestion from the NEU for training to be taken online “would not be helpful for staff because the best training, which will keep you safe, should be done in the environment in which you are going to operate”.

The letter added: “Our biggest concern with what the NEU is doing is that, for a large group of our pupils, school is their safe haven. Those of us who work in schools, rather than NEU branch offices [ this seems quite an attack, given that one of these letters was signed by classroom teachers working in 15 Harris schools, stating that they spoke on behalf of colleagues] have been speaking to pupils week-in, week-out during this crisis…young children are not so much at risk of coronavirus, but of what can happen to them when schools close down.”

The letter also stated: “With the majority of shops re-opening on Monday parents are counting on us to help them return to work, with many feeling anxious about whether they will have jobs to return to.”

Evidence from one local authority in which Harris operates

Bearing in mind in particular that last statement, it is possible to wonder whether Harris is in line, or not, with moves by other schools, and with parental opinion, in the areas in which it operates.

Very interesting information on this front is available on the website of Labour-controlled Southwark council, where Harris operates six of its schools.

The council’s statement, seemingly from just before the scheduled wider re-opening on June 1^st, stated that only 43 of the local authority’s 75 primary schools – and four of its five nursery schools – were planning to open to the selected year group by June 2^nd.

The statement added: “The council understands there is a range of views among parents, teachers and the trade unions about the reopening of schools to a wider range of pupils, with initial findings from a council survey showing that more parents do not support reopening on 1 June than do support it.”

Councillor Jasmine Ali, Cabinet Member for Children, Schools and Adult Care, was quoted saying: “We are aware that many parents have expressed concerns about the proposed reopening of schools whilst also expressing positive experiences about education at home during the lockdown. I want to reassure parents that schools are only starting a phased reopening when they believe it is safe to do so…

“We know the government’s own chief science officer warned yesterday that there is little room for manoeuvre, so with the R [reinfection] rate still so close to 1, rest assured the council’s public health team will be monitoring the situation very closely.”

Further exchange of letters

Responding to the Harris letter, NEU regional officials Michael Gavan and Emily Parsons wrote to Sir Dan last Monday, June 1st, stating: “Our members were disappointed by your letter. It wasn’t just the inaccuracies but also the unnecessarily hostile tone.

“Using phrases such as ‘the NEU has timed its latest attempt to stop the re-opening of schools to coincide with half-term’ is completely unjustified. The NEU has not tried to stop the re-opening of schools – we have simply said that re-opening should be done as safely as possible and therefore we proposed that Harris primary schools should defer their opening to the 15^th of June.”

The officials’ letter then re-iterated the NEU’s position that there had been “sound scientific evidence for that proposal”. It then said that risk assessments had only been issued by Harris just before half-term, and that Harris had been wrong to suggest the union had advised its reps and members not to engage in consultation.

Even though Harris primary academies had opened on June 1^st, it was still important for there to be consultation on the risk assessments and, while some Harris heads had engaged with this constructively, others had not. The union now encouraged all heads to work with their NEU rep on the assessments.

Responding the following day, Sir Dan wrote that Harris had been “very sorry” that the officials had been unable to attend a consultation meeting held during half-term, on the argument that it had not wanted to set a precedent for half-term meetings.

The letter added: “The Harris Federation has, we believe, led the way in its preparations for the phased reopening of schools…We…began preparing for the reopening pretty much since schools were closed in the first place. With practically all our headteachers fielding daily cries for help from pupils or parents suffering through the closure of schools, we did everything we could to ensure our schools reopened safely, and without delay.

“Our letter to you, therefore, was far from hostile; rather it reflected the urgency with which many children from disadvantaged communities need to return to school…our staff and families were wholeheartedly happy to be back at school this morning, and that was wonderful to see.

“All of our academies have published their risk assessments and will continue to consult with staff, including NEU reps, on these important issues as we have done in the past.”

Latest development: four unions write to Harris

However, on Friday, the row appeared to deepen further, as officials from three other unions joined the NEU in writing to the federation.

A letter signed by officials from the National Association of Head Teachers, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers and the GMB, as well as two from the NEU, was headlined “failure to consult”.

It said: “We’re writing to express the concern of our unions over the failure of the Harris Federation to consult with us over the federation’s decision to extend the opening of primary schools from the 1^st of June and, to date, the failure to consult with us over extending the opening of secondary schools from the 15^th of June.

“Similarly, there has been a failure to consult with our unions at federation level in many Harris schools over the risk assessments related to their extended opening…

“Risk assessments have been rushed and issued late. In most cases Harris schools only issued them at the end of the week before half-term and some schools, eg St John’s Wood, have only issued them in the second half of this week.

“In too many Harris schools, headteachers have still not consulted with our reps about the risk assessments and this needs to be remedied…Our regular JCC [joint consultative committee] is [in] the diary for Wednesday, 10^th of June at 10am and it is important that meeting goes ahead so that we can raise the many issues we need to about Covid 19, the extended opening of Harris schools and in particular that the commitment to good practice in health and safety is upheld.”