Ms Anne Howard:

One will have to look at it next year where additional time and planning has been put in place and, hopefully, many of the issues that have been identified by unions as concerns for teachers can be looked at.

The July provision is not part of the teaching contract and did not form part of the contract teachers signed into. That does not suggest that teachers are not or would not be willing or delighted to engage in the work. It does come down, however, to making it attractive and making teachers feel comfortable, confident, willing and wanting to engage in the work. To do that, it is about giving people the expertise, the knowledge and the opportunity to do so, where this is secure, safe, well organised and well constructed, and where they are not going in and feeling that they are not on terra firma. All of the things that have been identified by all of us earlier on in how this is rolled out, moving forward, would give a much bigger or better picture of whether the system is broken to an extent, or is in the process of repair around the summer provision.

It is great that it and the possibilities have been very significantly extended out but we will not know until we get a “normal”, which is a word I dislike and is overrated, perhaps a more normal academic year which may give us a better indicator of the extent to which it is still broken.