A LEADING education expert has called for the Scottish Government to help fund a tutoring service for pupils who fall behind if schools in virus hotspots are forced to close.

Professor Lindsay Paterson, of Edinburgh University, said he had concerns about any return to blended learning or remote teaching if schools are shut either nationally or in parts of the country.

The First Minister has said she is striving to keep schools open but has not ruled out a situation where they may have to close.

Discussions are ongoing in the Scottish Government about whether to include school closures in its new tiered approach to local alerts which could leave schools open in parts of the country and closed in others.

Nicola Sturgeon yesterday pointed to Ireland which announced a return to strict lockdown measures earlier this week but has decided to keep schools open. Her comments could suggest a plan to include school closures among the most severe restrictions is under review.

Paterson said: “There seem now to be two possibilities that are being floated. One is complete closure of schools in certain areas.

“ In these cases, we would be back to all the problems encountered in the spring. They would be likely to be intensified by the weather. Teachers could take pupils (especially primary pupils) outside in the spring and summer, and many imaginative teachers did that. That is less feasible in the winter.

“The other possibility is ‘blended learning’. There is no reason to believe that the same problems would not arise, in different forms, if schools were to have a new kind of blended learning now.

“The same problems of internet access would arise, especially for pupils whose families can’t afford broadband. There might be less of a problem with online teaching, if only because it would be less necessary if every pupil was going to school for part of each week.

“But then a new problem would arise. Let’s suppose, for example, that half the school was in for half of the week, and the other half in the other part of the week. Who would be supervising the half of pupils who would be at home? It could no longer be the teacher, because teachers would be teaching the other half who were in school. It could not be parents, because one major reason for re-opening schools was to enable parents to go back to work. In many circumstances it could not be grandparents if there was any risk of the virus being passed on. So I fear that ‘blended learning’ would, in practice, now mean part-time schooling.”

He added: “Either of these two options leave pupils at a disadvantage. They would lose significant opportunities for learning. This loss would be greater for pupils living in poverty than for affluent pupils. So the attainment gap would widen. Far more needs to be done to provide good-quality internet access to pupils whose families can’t afford broadband. But it’s not just that, it’s also the difficulty which teachers and parents faced in trying to get pupils to engage with lessons from home. Research has shown that these difficulties were greater in socially deprived areas.

“The Scottish Government has refused to take part in the National Tutoring Programme which is provided in England by the Education Endowment Foundation with government funding. That could be a way of providing extra help to pupils at home, relieving some of the pressure on parents and teachers.”

The Scottish Government is to publish their framework in the coming days.