Today (Tuesday 18th May 2021) school leaders call to
be released from the burden of running the test and trace system
in schools, as new poll data shows that they have spent on
average 44 additional hours on it since the start of the school
year – the equivalent of 7 extra school days.
The call comes as school leaders’ union NAHT holds a ‘New and
Aspiring Heads’ Conference at which delegates highlighted the
extreme pressure Covid had put on all school leaders, especially
those new to the job.
A quick poll in NAHT’s newsletter last week asked how many extra
hours members had spent running test and trace in their schools
since September. The average answer was 44 hours, from 401
respondents, though many reported having spent more than 100
hours.
Speaking at the conference today, NAHT general secretary Paul
Whiteman said: “School leaders have spent every weekend and
holiday on call for the whole of the last year, expected to
receive notifications of positive cases and then identify and
notify all close contacts of the need to self-isolate. It was
just assumed that school leaders would take on this additional
duty despite the government spending billions on a national test
and trace system. Not a penny of that money was given to schools.
“To begin with schools accepted that they were the people best
placed to track and inform students when there was a Covid case
in their school, because they were the ones who had all the
contact information. But it has been a full year now and
absolutely no effort has been made to release school leaders from
this burden, or to give them additional staff or resources to do
it.
“School leaders were the ones forced to phone families over the
Christmas holidays, for example, to tell them they had to
isolate. They have been responsible for delivering this bad news
with virtually no training or guidance on how to do this. School
leaders and their teams have been effectively propping up the
national test and trace infrastructure since last September. This
has had a particularly hard impact on schools in areas with high
rates of infection – as we see from the hundreds of hours
reported by many leaders.
“The extra burden this has put on school leaders cannot be
underestimated. As we try to bring forward the next generation of
school leaders at our conference today, the biggest barrier and
concern we hear from aspiring head teachers is the level of
pressure and the workload they see in the role. It’s a hard
enough job to take one, being a head teacher, but to step into it
over the last year must truly have seemed impossible. I am in awe
of the incredible job our members have done.
“The difference between teacher and leader pay in education has
been narrowed in the last decade but the responsibility has
rocketed during Covid. We are already anticipating an exodus by
head teachers once the crisis has passed. One tangible thing the
government could do right now to help is to remove the burden of
running test and trace in schools and give leaders some free time
back.”
