Schools plan to bring back online lessons and Covid-style classes for vulnerable children as they prepare for expected teachers’ strikes, The Independent has been told.
Ministers also hope schools can join together to share resources, raising the prospect of pupils being bussed to different buildings for a day.
The government is drawing up contingency plans for possible walkouts across England, with two of the UK’s major teaching unions due to unveil the results of strike ballots on Monday.
The National Education Union (NEU) has said it is confident teachers will back walkouts and said industrial action could begin as soon as January 30.
In a meeting last week, the education secretary Gillian Keegan warned unions that “the stakes have never been higher” around strikes because they would affect children whose education has already been harmed by the pandemic.
Paul Smith, the CEO of The White Horse Federation, an academy trust with 31 schools, said that while they respected the right of the profession to strike they had a “moral responsibility” to balance that with the needs of everyone, “especially those who are most vulnerable”.
He said that if the NEU ballot meets the threshold for action to happen, his organisation “will be introducing Covid-like arrangements so that the most vulnerable students and those from key worker families have a safe and warm place they can come to during any industrial action”.
The group is also planning to provide lunch for all those eligible for free school meals.
But he said he hoped ministers and the trade unions would find a solution to avert strike action. “The last thing our students should have to endure is more days without school,” he said.
Seamus Murphy, the CEO of Turner Schools, an academy trust with five schools in Folkestone, said his organisation planned to provide online learning as well as in-person classes for vulnerable children and those preparing for their GCSEs and A-Levels on strike days.
He said: “Turner schools will remain open for vulnerable pupils and where possible be open for children in our exam year groups in Years 6, 11 and 13. For those pupils who have to remain at home, we will provide online learning through our well-established digital systems.”
It is understood that ministers want schools that belong to multi-academy trusts to share resources on strike days, particularly if they already share a head teacher.
A government source said: “We have some fantastic heads who are highly innovative and creative and I expect we will see some great examples of that in the eventuality of strikes.”
Dame Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner, has warned that strikes would put vulnerable pupils at risk and criticised teachers for planning industrial action.
“As we face the prospect of teacher strikes in England, I feel more strongly than ever that this is the wrong course of action,” she wrote in the Sunday Telegraph. “It is damaging to children’s outcomes. It will disrupt their learning just as they are getting back on track [after the pandemic].”
Sam Freedman, a former adviser at the Department for Education under then-education secretary Michael Gove, said the two main options schools had were online learning and joining together in a bid to keep at least one site open.
“Most multi-academy trusts are geographically focused, with three or four schools in the same town or part of a city,” he said. “So [joining together] certainly would be an option. To say to parents ‘you’ll have to travel a bit further today, if you want kids in school as we’ve got one site open’.”
He said schools “probably won’t” make much of live online lessons of the kind that exhausted many working parents during the pandemic. But he suggested there could be more use of pre-recoded online lessons, such as those created by the government’s Oak Academy during Covid.
Union leaders, however, have expressed doubts over the plans.
Children could return to online lessons if teacher agree to strike
