Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said that it’s ludicrous that betting shops are free to reopen while parents don’t even know when their children can return to school.
Sir Keir Starmer said the problems confronting Downing Street on ensuring pupils were safe to return to classrooms were wholly foreseeable and reprimanded the Prime Minister of neglecting to engage with opposition parties to put together a plan.
There was no plan, no agreement and no leadership and Sir Keir Starmer said leaving children at home would be damaging not only to their education but also to their well-being and the longer schools are shut, the greater the damage to children’s well being and education and the growing demand on parents who have to shuffle childcare and work responsibilities.
And the warning from the Children’s Commissioner couldn’t have been starker with a generation of children now at risk because they’ve missed out on over six months of education.
Bookmakers and non-essential shops are reopening on Monday providing they can safely stick to social distancing guidelines.
Bookmakers and non-essential stores are opening on Monday providing they can safely stick to social distancing guidelines and it’s now been reported that Boris Johnson is contemplating dropping the hotly contested two-metre social distancing rule over the summer to free schools to reopen by September.
And at a Downing Street press conference, Boris Johnson confirmed he was moving slower than he would have wanted in some areas but that he wanted all students back in the classroom by September.
But Sir Keir Starmer said that the target was in danger of being missed if a plan was not put in place quickly and that without a plan, there’s a chance that even by September numerous schools will not be able to open, and some children could be out of education for an entire year.
He contended that creativity needed to be used to utilise vacant buildings across Britain, including theatres, museums and libraries, so they could be repurposed as temporary classrooms.
The Opposition leader called for Chancellor Rishi Sunak to announce new funding in the pre Budget report next month to pay for education over the summer months while also pushing for a one to one meeting to take place between teachers and parents before the holidays.
However, Boris Johnson said school students would undergo a huge catch-up operation over the summer and beyond to get up to speed on work children have missed.
The incompetent Tories should have been making emergency plans for schools by making sure they could be safely distanced by finding village halls, church halls and community halls.
After all, the elderly and vulnerable can’t use them but instead, they wasted money on Nightingale hospitals because of course Boris Johnson could then stand there and brag that he’d built these hospitals, alleging he was fulfilling his lie at the election – and what’s happened to them, they’re closed.
The thing is, schools, teachers and children have been let down for years by the Tories, and now we’ve got this pip-squeak Boris Johnson at the wheel who can’t regulate his trap.
