Why so contrary, Mary Bousted? Our pupils suffer — not you
TEACHING union boss Mary Bousted – one of the prime movers in keeping our schools closed – sounds as if she would be very happy to never see another child in her life.
In a Zoom meeting, Mary shared her thoughts on the little ones in Reception and Year One, “who are mucky, who spread germs, who touch everything, who cry, who wipe their snot on your trousers or your dress”.
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What a heart-warming affinity she has with children.
No wonder Mary — joint general secretary of the National Education Union, the largest teaching union — doesn’t want to see any snotty, sobbing brats any time soon.
The Government has modest plans to cautiously reopen schools on June 1 for Reception, Year One and Year Six — a move fanatically opposed by the teaching unions, who have written to every head in England warning them they face legal action if a teacher catches coronavirus at work.
“We want the wider opening of schools when Government provides the scientific evidence to show it is safe to do so,” sniffs a spokesman for the National Education Union.
Do they really? For the evidence already exists.
Acta Paediatricia, a monthly medical journal on paediatric research, published a review of 47 separate scientific studies which concluded that when schools reopen, children are unlikely to catch the virus and unlikely to pass it on.
WHY NOT US?
On Friday, the Government’s advisory group, Sage, said opening schools would not place teachers at greater risk than any other key worker. Yet, still, the teaching unions remain reluctant to see their members go back to normal practice, widescale teaching. Even though schools have already reopened in Canada, New Zealand, China and 22 EU countries, while in some countries — Iceland and Sweden — schools have never closed.
So why not us? Are the teaching unions using a national health emergency as a stick to beat a Tory government they despise?
Bousted insisted on Friday’s Any Questions on Radio 4 that the NEU does want to hold crunch talks to get schools reopened but maintains the risks to teachers could be reduced by half if the June start date was delayed. “We want to negotiate,” she insisted. “I was on a Zoom call with 20,000 teachers and support staff, and the Government has not given us confidence that it has their best interests at heart.”
But all over the world, children are already back at school.
Is school life the same as before? No, but children are adapting incredibly well to new rules on social-distancing, personal hygiene and staying safe. Nobody learns faster than a child.
If the teaching unions continue to stubbornly insist there must be absolutely no risk of infection, schools will have to stay closed for ever — even though the risk of children contracting Covid-19 is so low it is “statistically irrelevant”.
PRICE WILL BE PAID
“A zero-risk approach is not possible,” says Dr Peter English, of the British Medical Association.
But if there is a negligible risk if schools ever reopen, there is certainly a very high price to be paid for keeping them closed.
It will not be paid by Mary Bousted. It will be not paid by all the Boris-loathing Labour councils who also want to keep the schools shut. And it will not be paid by teachers, who will still get their six weeks of paid summer holiday.
The price will be paid by working-class children who are growing up in homes with no books.
It will be paid by the estimated 700,000 kids who have had no home-learning at all. It will be paid by underprivileged students who have no access to the internet.
It will be paid by bright kids from poor homes who are seeing their futures stolen. And the price will be paid by all those struggling parents who can’t return to work because the schools still remain closed.
The science tells us that it is safe to reopen the schools. So it is time for the teaching unions to be honest.
Do they really care about what is good for our children? Or only what is bad for the Tories?
Zap virus with fags — and jab
PRESIDENT Donald Trump is taking the anti-malaria drug Hydroxychloroquine as a preventative measure against coronavirus.
Artist David Hockney insists that smoking like a chimney stops you getting the virus.
Stark raving bonkers? Both theories have been angrily dismissed by experts.
Trump’s favourite malaria drug could give you heart problems, while Hockney’s beloved fags certainly increase your odds of lung cancer.
Yet there are serious scientific studies being done on both claims.
Scientists in Paris are giving nicotine patches to key workers to see if they prevent the virus while Hydroxychloroquine was being tested on 40,000 people across the world before Trump opened his cakehole. So please allow me to present my own apparently crackpot theory about how to fight Covid-19.
If you went to school before 2005 then you will have had a BCG vaccination to prevent tuberculosis. Schools in the UK no longer give the anti-TB jab but they still have mandatory BCG vaccination in Japan and South Korea. Japan has had just 771 deaths. South Korea has had only 264 deaths. While the UK has had over 36,000.
No doubt there are multiple factors involved in that stark difference. But clinical trials to see if the BCG vaccination really does protect you against Covid-19 are being run in at least six countries.
I sincerely hope one of those trials is being done in the UK.
Korea's got the idea
THE timid millionaires of English football continue to try mustering the courage to begin playing again – for all the world as if there are not teenage NHS nurses working 12-hour shifts in wards rife with Covid-19.
But a football club in South Korea shows a way forward.
FC Seoul played a closed-door game with no crowd but dozens of inflatable sex dolls in their empty stadium.
Not much chance of infectious disease in that crowd. But a severe risk of a puncture.
Tyson and Holyfield's rumble
IF Bundesliga football matches in ghost stadia don’t fry your onions, then sports fans turn to nostalgia to get their fix.
And what could bring the happy memories flooding back like Mike Tyson, 53, and Evander Holyfield, 57, getting back in the ring for one more rumble?
Talks for an unlikely third fight between the old ear-chomping rivals are ongoing.
“These guys were put on earth to fight,” David Haye enthuses, comparing Tyson and Holyfield to “a couple of old pit bulls”.
Please, God – no.
If Tyson and Holyfield were pit bulls then you would not let them fight.
You would call the RSPCA.
Ming the Merciless
MUM Morgan Rose sent TikTok into raptures by drawing Ming the Merciless eyebrows on her two-month-old daughter, Leighton Mae.
When new mums are drawing Ming eyebrows on their babies, right, this lockdown has possibly gone on for too long.
Naomi's a model citizen
NAOMI CAMPBELL turned 50 on Friday.
I have met Naomi a few times over the past 30 years and always found her nothing like her moody, scary, mobile-lobbing public image. Never punctual but always charming.
More than this, Naomi Campbell is a national treasure who never gets the credit she deserves for the social impact she has made in this country.
The first black British supermodel has done more to change race relations than she is ever given credit for.
Naomi has done as much as any black British sportsman to break down barriers, bigotry and prejudice.
Before Naomi, it was unheard of to see a black face on the cover of Vogue. And after Naomi, it was normal.
This is how the world changes. A charismatic individual comes along, changes the way people think, and nothing is ever the same again.
So happy birthday, Naomi. You made your country a better place.
MICK'S RICHEST
THE Rolling Stones are scattered far apart on this year’s Sunday Times Rich List.
Mick Jagger has £285million and Keith Richards has £270million, while Charlie Watts is struggling by on £155million and Ronnie Wood is on his uppers with £75million.
But if you don’t write the songs then, even in the biggest of bands, you will always be the poor relation.
Just ask Liam Gallagher.
The Tories need no lessons from Labour
LABOUR MP Rosie Duffield wags her finger at the Government for having so few women in the front line “while women make up the vast majority” of staff in hospitals, care homes and schools.
Oh, come off it, comrade! It is true that Priti Patel is the only top female Tory at the minute.
MOST READ IN OPINION
But the Tories have had two female PMs. And after 120 years, Labour has never even been led by a woman.
Boris Johnson responded that Duffield had “an extremely important point”.
Sorry, she really doesn’t.
The Tories need no lessons from Labour on equal opportunity. The party of the people has been led by more knights of the realm than women. No wonder the people stopped voting for them.
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