David Perks is the founder and headteacher at the East London Science School, built on the principle of offering a strong foundation in science and maths and encouraging critical thinking.
When they come back on March 8th, he will not be following government guidance and requiring his pupils to wear facemasks in class.
“I just felt it was completely upside down,” he tells me on LockdownTV. “If you’re going to bring the kids back, we want face to face teaching. Unless you do that, what are we actually doing?”
“We’ve just been doing months of Zoom lessons where the big problem you have with children is they won’t turn their cameras on. To then bring them into school, and instead of getting on with what you normally do, you put a face mask on — it’s like being back at home in a Zoom lesson. It’s just completely antithetical to what we’re trying to do.”
His school was hit earlier in the pandemic, with so many of the teachers and senior leadership falling ill to Covid they had to close the school even before the Government ordered it. So he now believes a lot of the teachers and pupils are immune. “We haven’t had a single positive test from a member of staff or child since December,” he says.
He believes the sudden change in guidance a year into the pandemic, tightening recommendations on mask wearing in class, is a political move designed to appease the teaching unions.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe