EDUCATION recovery funding will be needed for years to come, a teaching union has warned as schools made final preparations for Monday’s full reopening of schools.

Pupils will be returning to school in many different frames of mind, and those differences should be recognised and understood as part of a long-term response, National Education Union joint general secretary Dr Mary Bousted said.

Teachers, leaders and support staff have done “a magnificent job” simultaneously educating pupils at home and at school and have “done everything they could to support and protect children and young people,” she said.

That has been achieved despite “government incompetence on a huge scale — from repeated versions of guidance to rescuing and operating a track-and-trace system,” Dr Bousted observed.

“We all hope that this is the last lockdown,” she said — but the government has not “not done enough” to ensure that is the case and “while everyone hopes that things will go well, we are clear whose responsibility it will be if they do not: we will hold the government to account.”

Despite the government’s mantra that the road map is about “data not dates,” Education Secretary Gavin Williamson gave a blase guarantee today that schools would return again after the Easter holidays.

“We are very much factoring in as part of the road map that actually schools will be staying open,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr, adding: “That is why we are taking a cautious approach, because we intend for it to be an irreversible approach and that schools will continue to remain open.”

But Dr Bousted warned that secondary and post-16 leaders are “struggling to obtain parental consent for the testing of pupils — the cornerstone of the government’s plans for safe opening of secondary schools.”

She said: “Ministers need to explain more about how taking the test can keep communities safe. The logistics of mass testing are already resulting in a de-facto phased return in most secondary schools and colleges.

“The government should allow this to continue beyond the period necessary for the tests to be completed, in line with our call for a phased return until Easter.”

Dr Bousted added that the stress and anxiety faced by students on GCSE, A-level and vocational courses has been “completely unnecessary and would not have occurred if the government had followed joint union advice and prepared a ‘plan B’ if exams could not be taken.”