At some point this horrible pandemic will come under control.
We already know that there has been considerable damage to our children's education.
We cannot expect the current educational set-up to cope with repairing the damage done. The system has been under funded for so long that the teaching community are always under a massive strain just to maintain the status quo.
The effort to repair the damage and make up the back-log with have an adverse effect on the education of our children for a number of years. We should anticipate a significant migration away from teaching because of the stress if we are not proactive in our intervention.
There has to be intervention and it needs to be substantial and immediate.
You cannot just instantaneously produce large numbers of additional teachers and you most certainly cannot increase the availability of teaching facilities. You can almost hear the politicians arguing about it already... blaming everyone but themselves...
So let's have a student draft. Take recently qualified graduates and draft them back in to their local schools to assist in the classroom. They will have an enthusiasm for their subject; they will know the school and most of the staff; and most will be looking for a job. And let's not be tight fisted about it. Make it substantial, double (at least) the number of adults in our schools for the next one or two years.
We cannot leave this to the politicians. We need to tell them what to do. They will not act quickly enough and will not be insufficient. If we don't then you can guarantee that they'll expend all of their energy on blaming each other for what will be the inevitable outcome, a generation of children with a damaged education. Our children do not deserve that.
Expensive? In comparison to what we've already lost? Compared to the damage to our long term society by the loss of learning?
It should be our number one priority once we have the pandemic at heel.
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