Express & Star comment: Lost education means lost opportunities
By the time all children are able to return to school, they will have had virtually a lost year of education.
Lost education has brought with it lost opportunities, and damaging isolation from pals and the familiar school environment and school routine.
Getting back to where we were, and to go beyond where we were, is going to take a programme of rebuilding, both figuratively and literally, as there is a lot of catching up to do.
Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, has been in the eye of the storm over the course of the pandemic. Attempts to get children back into school have stuttered and faltered. Headteachers and staff have spoken of confusion, lack of clarity, and decisions made at such short notice that it has made life very difficult for professionals on the front line.
With glimpses of light starting to shine through the clouds, there is at last the hope that the most difficult days are behind us and that it will not be too long now that the schools will be able to operate once more in the way intended.
Given the damage done by the disruption, getting back to "normal" is not going to be enough, and to that end Mr Williamson has a plan which would see more than £1 billion being invested in rebuilding 50 dilapidated schools, while 21 new free schools will be built, creating 15,500 new school places.
And he says this programme would be just the start of work that will see up to 500 rebuilding projects over the next decade, many in the West Midlands, which he feels has fallen behind some other parts of the country.
Mmm... sounds like Tony Blair has risen again. What was it? Education, education, education.
Mr Williamson has come in for a lot of stick during the course of the pandemic, and there will be little if anything he can look back on with fondness from the last few months.
But a new situation thanks to the improving picture allows for a reset and a chance to look to the future with a rising degree of confidence.
Much has been taken away from the younger generation by this terrible crisis, so now is the time to start thinking of ways to give it back – and more.
