HE’S the person at the eye of the storm over when schools will operate as normal, but is Larry Flanagan the bogeyman some parents believe is protecting teachers at the expense of their children’s education?

As the leader of Scotland’s biggest teaching union, he is a powerful voice but Flanagan is frustrated that anybody would believe there is a conspiracy to keep children out of school.

“I guarantee teachers will be as delighted to get back to normal as anyone else because blended learning is not an easy option and there are huge challenges around trying to support kids through, not quite an artificial process, but certainly not an ideal classroom situation,” he told the Sunday National.

Yet although Flanagan accepts blended learning – where children split their time between school and learning remotely at home – is not ideal, he is adamant that schools will not operate normally until it is safe to do so.

READ MORE: These are the questions we must ask as Scots schools return

That could be longer than many parents would wish, as Flanagan warns that the current situation in China – which has had to reinstate a lockdown in Beijing because of a resurgence of coronavirus cases – could happen in Scotland if restrictions are lifted too quickly.

He said that while countries like Denmark already had their children back in school, infection rates were lower than they are in Scotland.

“You could just as easily be in the Beijing situation where they went many days without a case and now are in lockdown. I know the First Minister is saying we are not planning for blended learning for a year, but we are ... because potentially we don’t know what is going to happen.

“You can start saying ‘well it is just a contingency’ but everything is a contingency and you have got to have a balance of probability around where we are likely to be.”

The same principle applies to exams, in Flanagan’s opinion. “You can’t wait until next May or June to decide what will happen – you need to plan for the potential disruption that a further lockdown would create and the impact blended learning is going to create and try to have something you can deliver even in adversity because what we are not going to have next year is normality.

“Even if we get there at some point it is going to be difficult. Kids who will be sitting exams have lost a month in June already so they are not even beginning from a normal starting point.”

Flanagan also hit out at last week’s “politicking” of the issue when rows broke out over how many pupils could be taught at any one time in the blended learning model and how soon they all could be back in school.

“The question is wholly related to control of the virus and to me that is a sensible yardstick that cuts through all the politicking,” he said. “We will move back to a more normal situation as soon as we can but only when the public health guidance allows that. I don’t have a sense that we are close to that at the moment.

‘‘We are only going into phase two of coming out of the lockdown and may well be in a better place just coincidentally because it is summer. There is a general sense that winter is a more dangerous period for the virus to spread, so we are going to have to be on our toes until there is a vaccine or we could end up like Beijing having to go back into lockdown.”

Flanagan warned that talking of going back to normal too soon would lead to confusion and delays in making sure schools were ready to cope.

“If we start saying we could be back to normal in August then people think they will wait and see what happens before they commit and there is not a snowball’s chance in hell we will be going to be back to normal in August.”

Flanagan said the priority for teachers would be creating a nurturing culture when the pupils do go back as many will have been traumatised by the lockdown experience.

“There is going to be a huge well-being challenge because lots of kids will have been traumatised by the experience of lockdown and the first challenge of getting them back in is making them feel supported.

“That is what everybody in education is talking about, and then getting these voices presenting it as somehow we don’t want kids back because we have some other agenda is hugely frustrating because everybody in the system is busting a gut to try and make this work.”

He said the safety of teachers and pupils went hand-in-hand and parents would only send children back if they felt schools were safe and schools could only remain open if staff were not off ill and forced to self-isolate.

FLANAGAN pointed out that so far the Scottish Government had been “consistently cautious” and in doing so had gained the country’s support. “As a nation we have looked down our noses at Boris Johnson and thought they didn’t know what they were doing there, with schools open and schools shut, while we have a plan in place.

READ MORE: Alison Anderson: Tories forced to use ‘shock and awe’ to make Brexit palatable

“That plan is blended learning until the health situation improves. I don’t think it is useful to throw into that mix that it might be fine and we might be back to normal on August 11 because I think that just confuses things. We can’t say that’s wrong because clearly everything is a possibility but the working assumption is what John Swinney was saying and that is that blended learning is the foreseeable future.”

As it is only a fortnight until the school term ends, Flanagan said the plans had to be put in place now and he was “hugely dispirited” by the political rows that had broken out last week.

“I feel as if it has been a wasted week with politics to the fore. People are picking up the bits they want from the First Minister so on Thursday lots of papers were saying we could be back close to normal on August 11. Theoretically you could – but only if things improve more quickly than anticipated.’’

Flanagan said arrangements had to be made now so that parents could be informed and teachers knew when each group would be in school.

“This is not something that is in the future,” Flanagan said, “It is something that has to be the operational framework for the moment.

“I have found this week hugely dispiriting because the education recovery group has been working with the idea that this is a national recovery plan for education and we all need to be pulling in the same direction in the interest of kids and now it feels as if politics has broken out and is cutting across that effort.

“It takes away from the idea that this is a national effort.”

He said people had to get behind education the way they got behind the NHS when the lockdown began.

“We really need the same thing to happen with education but now it is becoming a point of hair-splitting and endless debate.”

One of those debates has been whether the physical distancing in schools needs to be two metres or one but Flanagan pointed out that in countries where the distance has been reduced to one metre there had been a lower level of infection.

He admitted blended learning would pose problems, the biggest being maintaining pupil engagement, but said it would significantly improve what had been offered during the lockdown, when schools, teachers and students had been unprepared.

“The key thing is that the teacher does have two or three days’ interaction with the pupils so the teacher will be much more in control of what the kids do outside the classroom. It will definitely be better. It is only working for a minority of pupils at the moment.”

AN appeal has been made to retired teachers to help out and Flanagan said that rather than go back into school they could provide mentoring support for individual pupils.

“The worry is that affluent parents will just buy in tutors to support their kids but why don’t we have a state tutoring system where pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds have a mentor who helps them stay on track with the online learning. That’s the kind of area that has not been explored significantly,” he said.

Flanagan pointed out that money had to be found for these innovations and called on the Scottish Government and the local authorities to come to an agreement over it.

“The big issue is that local authorities could do more with more money and it is a chicken and egg situation as the government is saying ‘well tell us what you need’ and the local authorities are saying ‘no, give us the money and we will do it’.

“It is the usual Cosla/Scottish Government wrangle and to be honest we are not interested in holding the jerseys – we just want a plan. Put the money on the table then let’s look at what additional solutions we can deliver around supporting blended learning and getting as close as possible to 50% attendance. That would be a good first target.”

Venues not currently being used because of the lockdown could operate as a temporary solution to create more capacity, Flanagan argued.

“All this politics kicked off with Edinburgh saying their model was only 33% of pupils in at school at any one time but the context for that is that Edinburgh schools are bursting at the seams because about a decade ago they closed a lot of schools and merged others so all of their schools are pretty full,” he said.

“What Edinburgh had not done at that point was explore additionality in terms of alternative premises. And they are now saying they can do that if there is additional money. I think they should just be planning it and saying to the Scottish Government ‘this is the bill – are you prepared to support it?’

“In Edinburgh there is the international conference centre which is huge and is not getting used at moment – why is the council not taking that over as a senior phase hub for those kids who are sitting exams?

“It would require additional teachers but it is the sort of thing that I think councils should be looking at as a way forward.”