53. WHEN IS A BUBBLE NOT A BUBBLE? - Educating The Department for Education

It doesn’t take a logician to see the problems with the Department for Education’s plan for secondary schools this September, but it can help to crystallise the specific flaws by laying out the argument carefully.

Covid-19 remains an infectious and potentially deadly virus with fast community spread and no known cure or vaccine.
In order to interact safely in a world with the risk of Covid-19 we therefore need to reduce the possibility of transmission from person-to-person.
Risk of person-to-person transmission can be mitigated in a variety of ways, such as:
Schools have a high potential risk of transmission because the family units of students and the family units of teachers and other staff intermingle in small and often crowded classrooms for sustained periods of time, as well as getting to and from school, often on shared or public transport. Therefore, since March, UK schools have adopted mitigation approach c), closing schools to all but the most essential staff and children with no other alternative and teaching lessons remotely.
It is important to note here: schools did not close during the pandemic. They continued to provide lessons, resources and feedback for all students. It was just done remotely, online, instead of in a shared physical space. While this approach had some flaws, which will be discussed, the argument was that the pros outweighed the cons in terms of mitigating transmission of Covid-19 (and also worth remembering that the in-school provision of education is itself an imperfect model with it own pros and cons).
The DfE’s line for September is that approach c) has had a detrimental impact on students and therefore they want all students to return to school full-time in September, “making judgments at a school level about how to balance and minimise any risks from coronavirus (COVID-19) with providing a full educational experience for children and young people.”
The guiding principles of a safe return is for schools to “do everything possible to minimise contacts and mixing while delivering a broad and balanced curriculum” and the main strategy, given that c) has been dismissed would remain a) and/or b).
However, the DfE guidance states face coverings “are not required in schools” and that using them may have “negative effects on communication and thus education” and expressly forbid the use of rotas to bring back students part-time into school to give a 50/50 (or thereabouts) mix of online and in-person learning despite “recognition that children, and especially the youngest children, cannot socially distance from staff or from each other.” So they are sending students back to school, seeking to reduce person-to-person transmission without using a), b), or c).
The rationale on masks gives a clue to the approach and why they believe a), b) or c) is not needed. Face coverings don’t need to be worn “as pupils and staff are mixing in consistent groups”. The DfE plan is to teach students in distinct “bubbles” because “consistent groups reduce the risk of transmission by limiting the number of pupils and staff in contact with each other to only those within the group” and “maintaining distinct groups or ‘bubbles’ that do not mix makes it quicker and easier in the event of a positive case to identify those who may need to self-isolate, and keep that number as small as possible”.
However, this “bubble” approach - the only thing securing staff and students from transmission in the absence of a), b), and c) - has fundamental flaws when we see what a “bubble” consists of: “In secondary schools, and certainly in the older age groups at key stage 4 and key stage 5, the groups are likely to need to be the size of a year group to enable schools to deliver the full range of curriculum subjects and students to receive specialist teaching.” The consistent group, therefore, in a secondary school, will be a group of 120 or so, plus all the teachers of that group.
Unless a school can afford to pay for a single teacher to teach only the one year group (which they can’t currently, and the DfE guidance makes very clear “there are no plans at present to reimburse additional costs incurred” in making a school Covid-secure), then in the context of secondary education where specialist teachers teach their specific subject across all year groups, every subject teacher will be a potential vector of transmission, breaking the consistency of the group “bubble”. (For example, in my own case as a secondary school teacher, I currently teach RE or Philosophy to Year 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13. I therefore have the potential, on my current timetable, to transmit Covid-19 to every “bubble” in the school!)
As well as teachers creating points of transmission across “bubbles”, the DfE also note “siblings may also be in different groups.” Although the guidance tells schools that “endeavouring to keep these groups at least partially separate and minimising contacts between children will still offer public health benefits as it reduces the network of possible direct transmission” it is not at all clear how siblings coming home together and interacting does not break the “bubble” each day.
As well as teachers and younger/older siblings meaning that every bubble is broken, there is also the issue of transport to and from school. The guidance states “The approach to dedicated transport should align as far as possible with the principles underpinning the system of controls set out in this document and with the approach being adopted for your school”, meaning that if students are taking dedicated school transport (such as school buses) then those buses should match the “bubbles”, but, again, given buses are usually based on geographic routes not year groups, if different year group bubbles are sharing the same circulated air on a cramped bus it is a less than airtight bubble! In my own school’s case, current dedicated transport is also shared across multiple schools - breaking bubbles further. There are also those students who come to school on public transport. At least masks are mandatory on public transport even if “Schools should also have a process for removing face coverings when pupils and staff who use them arrive at school and communicate it clearly to them”.
So the justification in removing mitigation approaches a), b), and c) in school is that they are not needed because of approach d) - consistent group “bubbles”. But points 11, 12, and 13 show that these so-called “bubbles” are not secure at all, making approach d), in its current form, essentially ineffective.
Approach d) could be made effective if used in combination with a), b) and c), however. Approach d) + social distancing would at least add a further level of mitigation to each bubble, lowering the likelihood of transmission within a group, even from teachers, siblings and fellow travellers. Likewise approach d) + mandatory face coverings for all, or approach d) done on a rota system, to keep the bubbles genuinely distinct, with other groups/members being taught online on the days/weeks they are not in school.
However the DfE have explicitly told schools they cannot do any or all of these three ways which would make them safer and reduce the risk of community spread within schools.
Therefore not only does the approach not make students or staff safe when returning to work this September, but following the DfE guidance actively makes schools less safe than they could be were they free to implement a more flexible return based on a mixture of remote and in-school learning combined with social distancing and PPE.

And not to let go of a point previously argued here on Philosophy Unleashed - the full-time, Covid-secure, classroom is not the classroom we came from and is not a place where we can safely do many of the things which we used to do as teachers or students, making the value of actually being in the classroom questionable from a pedagogical point of view. That is not to dismiss the potential value of physically being in school from a psychological and mental health point of view - students miss their friends, colleagues miss each other. But we must remember even the flawed DfE guidance makes it clear “maintaining a distance between people whilst inside and reducing the amount of time they are in face to face to contact lowers the risk of transmission. It is strong public health advice that staff in secondary schools maintain distance from their pupils, staying at the front of the class, and away from their colleagues where possible” and that while “there is no evidence that children transmit the disease any more than adults” that is a far cry from the old line they used to spin that children somehow transmitted the disease less. So as adult staff at schools, we are not safely able to intermingle, and even if the idea (which is debatable) that children are somehow affected less by the virus than adults is true, the children are still spreaders of the virus and can spread it to family, friends and school staff at exactly the same rate as an adult could, making groups of several hundred of them crammed together in small school spaces essential “super spreader” events. To enable such events is negligent at best, to legally enforce them is criminal. The wellbeing benefits of some time in school, if done safely, might be beneficial and fairly low-risk, but this is not what is being proposed. Meanwhile, the continued refrain that online learning is somehow less than in-school learning continues to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is no reason is has to be, and proper investment from government so that all staff and students have key resources (including broadband access and devices) would make a significant difference to the viability of 50/50 (or more) remote learning capabilities. Considering even the flawed DfE plans require a concurrent online learning plan anyway because “every school will also need to plan for the possibility of a local lockdown and how they will ensure continuity of education” and “where a pupil is unable to attend school because they are complying with clinical and/or public health advice, we expect schools to be able to immediately offer them access to remote education”, the promotion of, and success of, remote online provision ought to be prioritised, rather than marginalised. The last three months have seen all kinds of problems with online provision, but none of them are because online teaching doesn’t work, they are because students/teachers didn’t have resources, or because students/teachers didn’t have experience or training in how to deliver or take advantage of online teaching, or had no motivation to do it because they were consistently told it was second-rate and not the real thing. This can all be easily changed with a clear message that we are teaching online now: this is school until there is a vaccine.

But all these arguments pre-suppose that the DfE is being genuine when it says that it is looking to reduce transmission and make things safe for staff and students. Considering every single government approach to public safety in this crisis has been flawed and deadly, there is little reason to trust the legitimacy or safety of any advice which comes out of Westminster. As a source of knowledge, this particular source has long proven its unreliability. We have already seen that the reality of a genuinely Covid-secure classroom makes traditional pedagogy difficult, putting the lie to the DfE’s claim that “returning to school is vital for children’s education and for their wellbeing” and that if online learning were taken seriously, done well, and properly funded it would not be true that “time out of school is detrimental for children’s cognitive and academic development, particularly for disadvantaged children.” The disadvantage and alleged impact which “can affect both current levels of learning and children’s future ability to learn” they say prompts the “need to ensure all pupils can return to school sooner rather than later” is entirely due to conditions constructed and sustained by this government and which could be transformed without a single student returning to an unsafe classroom. Likewise, while it is true that “school is a vital point of contact for public health and safeguarding services that are critical to the wellbeing of children and families”, that, again, is because many essential welfare services and infrastructure responsibilities have been outsourced to schools as a way of government washing their hands of such duties.

As always in this capitalist system, true answers come from following the money. Why is the DfE so eager to get everyone back into school in September despite it being flagrantly unsafe? The answer is there in the guidance: “for many households, school closures have also affected their ability to work. As the economy begins to recover, we need to remove this barrier so parents and carers can return to work.”

And just as the rest of the country are being forced into unsafe workplaces to make money for their bosses at great risk to their own safety and that of their community, “staff in educational settings tend not to be at any greater risk from the disease than many other occupations”. This is nothing to do with educational necessity and student wellbeing - it is about capital pure and simple. People who can stay safely at home want to make money and they need the rest of us to put our lives at risk so they can do that. A tale as old as exploitation, as slavery; a tale as old as time. A tale, as I said, you don’t have to be a logician to see, but it helps.

Author: D. McKee

My book, AUTHENTIC DEMOCRACY: AN ETHICAL JUSTIFICATION OF ANARCHISM is available everywhere now. To avoid funding Amazon, get it direct from the publishers at Tippermuir Books.