more than one in five secondary school
pupils in
england was out of school last week
because of coronavirus the highest
number since september
keeping children in the classroom has
been one of the key goals for the
government
who say half a million laptops are going
to schools to help pupils isolating
but it's a policy which comes with
enormous challenges for both pupils and
staff
before the pandemic school attendance
was normally around 95
the latest figures showed just 78 of
teenagers were in the classroom last
week
our education editor ramen jeffries
reports from noseley on merseyside one
of the worst
affected areas this term even
break times carefully managed a school
hit hard by coronavirus
teachers and pupils having to isolate in
year 10 we've had to
have bubble closure an entire bubble
closure in year 11
we've had a partial bubble closure
there's a significant number of days
that have been lost as part of that
across year 11 just since september
more than 700 days in the classroom lost
even now we're still just catching up
with work that we missed during lockdown
so there's still a lot of content that
we need to catch up on before
learning the content that we should be
right now i don't think it's really fair
because
at the end of the day we're all sitting
the same exam and some have had
more time in school than others and it
could affect people differently
as someone who's self-isolated already
i think it's really like stressful
to like even think about the fact that
we've possibly
got to do exams in a few months time you
won't be learning all the content that
you
that will be on your exam so it not only
affects your gcses but also college
in this part of merseyside as many as 4
out of 10 teenagers
have been out of secondary school at any
one time now local infection rates have
improved
very slightly but those are still days
in the classroom
those teenagers won't get back and
schools are worried that if there's more
disruption after christmas
they simply won't be able to cover all
of the content
of their gcses plans for exams
promised soon one suggestion grades
could be more
generous than usual across england it's
exactly the same as
reducing the content for for everybody
what we need
is a more localized approach to take
into account
the exact nature of the disruption that
we faced
with one more baby we could have managed
but not with two
in english pupils will have more choice
in exam questions
some want it allowed in other subjects
you could have different papers that
cover different parts of the content or
you could have a single paper
but guide pupils to the questions that
they should answer based on the content
they've studied
how high would you put the risk of the
government
getting itself into very difficult
position again at the moment i think
that risk
is very high as they try to keep cases
at bay
unions warn more pupils may need to
learn at home
ministers determined schools will stay
open
come what may branwyn jeffries bbc news
nosley