Fuming teachers have hit out at "unforgivable" comments from ex-Education Secretary Sir Gavin Williamson that they were looking for an "excuse" not to work during the pandemic.
Leaked WhatsApps between Sir Gavin and the-then Health Secretary Matt Hancock show the pair criticising staff for wanting to ensure schools were safe.
As talks were underway to reopen classrooms in May 2020, the messages show Sir Gavin wanted to make sure PPE was provided so that schools "can't use [the shortage] as a reason not to open".
He claimed that some would want to use it as "an excuse to avoid having to teach".
In October 2020, Mr Hancock referred to the teaching unions as "a bunch of absolute arses", to which Sir Gavin responded: "They really really do just hate work.”
The explosive comments, revealed in more than 100,000 WhatsApps obtained by the Telegraph, triggered a furious backlash from teachers.
ASCL President Evelyn Forde, headteacher at Copthall School in north-west London, told the Mirror she was "beyond angry and frankly disgusted" at the messages.
“I don’t think anyone should underestimate the inordinate amount of work that went into what school and college leaders had to do," she said.
"To say that teachers didn’t want to work and to label the teaching unions as “a****” is shocking, disappointing and ultimately unforgivable."
Ms Forde added: "Headteachers across the country followed the rules, followed the guidance and did everything they could for their schools. Meanwhile, Matt Hancock and Gavin Williamson were sending text exchanges denigrating our profession. Shame on them.”
Striking staff from the National Education Union, who (NEU) joined picket lines in the south of England yesterday(THURS), said the comments showed how "out of touch" Tories had no clue about the reality in schools.
Reception teacher Kennedy Byrne said: "Teachers worked throughout lockdown and there are examples of teachers working on day one of lockdown on March 23.
"It's just the latest example of how out of touch our Tory government is at the moment. They just don't know what's actually happening on the ground."
The 30-year-old, who teaches at a primary school in Chichester, said he had taken on a second job driving for a laundry company to try to pay for a summer holiday with his family.
Speaking after a rally for striking teachers in the Education Secretary's West Sussex constituency, he said schools had been told to find money for pay rises from squeezed budgets.
"It just means resources are depleting," he said.
"Adults are losing their jobs and children are losing their life chances."
Phil Walker, a drama teacher at Chichester High School, was on the picket line yesterday(THURS) as he said things were reaching "the point of no return" due to workload, stress and poor pay.
The 56-year-old dismissed Sir Gavin's claim he had only been criticising unions, not teachers. "We are the union - it's all part of the same thing," he said. "But I'm not surprised... they are not listening to us."
Hundreds of protesters joined a rally in Bristol, with banners saying “Tory Sleaze, Pay Freeze, Budget Squeeze” and “Save Our Schools”.
Emma Grant, 40, an early years teacher at Bettridge School in Cheltenham said: “We didn’t have any days off during Covid, we worked all over Easter, we worked our hardest to make sure our pupils and their families were supported all through Covid.
“The fact the Tory Government were off having parties and calling us lazy is absolutely disgusting.”
Emily Mason, 35, a SEND teacher from St Catherine’s Catholic Primary School in Swindon said the leaked texts were “telling” and “disgusting”.
She said: “People who taught and worked during Covid not only put themselves in dangerous situations every day but they went in for our children.
“We had vulnerable teachers going in, we were working from home suddenly overnight having to set up a completely different curriculum to teach children from home and that was just expected of us.
“To have that thrown back in our face by ministers is frankly disgusting.”
Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said the comments laid bare the contempt the Tories have for the teaching profession.
She said: “These comments are a kick in the teeth for teachers who stretched every sinew for children during the pandemic.
"They add insult to injury at a time when fewer people are joining the profession, and when teachers are leaving classrooms in their droves.
"The Conservatives have shown us today exactly how much they value our teachers. Labour will always value the incredible work all school staff do."
Dr Mary Bousted, Joint General Secretary of the National Education Union, said the Government's handling of education in the pandemic was shambolic.
“The Education Secretary was clearly out of his depth and, we now hear, contemptuous of unions and teachers," she said.
"Given the current dispute with the Department for Education over teacher pay, we sincerely hope Gillian Keegan does not share this attitude and gets around the table to discuss a resolution to the pay dispute.”
Sir Gavin tried to claim that his comments were only about some unions rather than teachers themselves.
He tweeted: "As demonstrated in the exchange, I was responding regarding unions.
"I have the utmost respect for teachers who work tirelessly to support students. During the pandemic, teachers went above and beyond during very challenging times and very much continue to do so."
Mr Hancock's spokesman did not respond to requests for comment on the messages regarding teachers.
In a broader statement, he blasted journalist Isabel Oakeshott for a "massive betrayal and breach of trust" in leaking his WhatsApp messages, which he shared when the pair collaborated on his pandemic diaries.
"I am also sorry for the impact on the very many people - political colleagues, civil servants and friends - who worked hard with me to get through the pandemic and save lives," he said.
"There is absolutely no public interest case for this huge breach. All the materials for the book have already been made available to the Inquiry, which is the right, and only, place for everything to be considered properly and the right lessons to be learned.
"As we have seen, releasing them in this way gives a partial, biased account to suit an anti-lockdown agenda."
Earlier this week, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said it was "hugely disappointing" that the NEU had not called off its strikes and insisted the Government wanted to discuss pay.
But NEU leaders have said the Government has not given any ground and strikes were still on, with nationwide walkouts in England and Wales due on March 15 and 16.
Secondary School teacher, Essex
A trip back to December 2020 for all staff who work in schools is one that none of my colleagues would opt to go on. We were teaching behind lines in classrooms wearing masks, with all our students wearing masks, in freezing temperatures with all the windows and doors open in an effort to ‘prevent the spread of Covid’.
If a student at the back wasn’t working, I couldn’t tell, if some students were making silly noises, I couldn’t tell which ones were doing so, if a student broke down in tears, I couldn’t go anywhere near them to reassure them or even see their face through the mask.
In order to protect bubbles at breaktime, we had to teach for 40 minutes, stop teaching, let the students go out, go and stand in the playground with them to supervise them for 20 minutes, all troop back into the classroom and finish the last 20 minutes of the lesson. If it was raining, we’d all be in the classroom in our wet clothes.
Then there were the ‘disappearances’, your heart sank when a masked member of the pastoral team would appear at the door and remove half your class as somebody near them had contracted Covid. They would troop out sadly, two metres removed from you and each other and you would wonder when you would see them again.
The students desperately needed continuity and we had none to give them.
We couldn’t even talk to each other about it. We weren’t allowed to speak to our colleagues face to face. We weren’t allowed in the staffroom, I was told off for speaking to a dear colleague in the playground. We couldn’t eat lunch together, get a cup of tea together or go for a walk. We were alone.
Did any of it help? In November, the Covid cases started to rise. Everybody was worried. The stories started to come out of people picking up Covid and accidentally giving it to vulnerable family members. Many of my colleagues were in the same position as me. They asked their parents to help with the childcare as no breakfast or after school clubs were open so in order for us to work, we had to ask our parents to put themselves on the line.
I wonder if we’ll ever hear the story of those brave people, the older vulnerable ones who loved their grandchildren so much, that they put their own safety on the line so that staff could get into schools and teach other peoples’ children.
And then the deaths started. Mostly it was my colleagues’ parents, usually their fathers in fact. The Head of Finance’s father died alone in hospital raving, he’d picked up Covid from his son who lived with him, in her last conversation with him, he was begging her to come and see him. We couldn’t even give her a hug as she took the day off to bury him.
My main memory is the fear. What if I got Covid and gave it to my vulnerable parents? My sister and brother were barely speaking to me as they felt that I was putting our parents in danger. I spoke to the Headteacher who told me that there was nothing she could do.
We all started getting Covid, colleagues would appear back at work coughing, drained, with brain fog and the tiredness. Two colleagues were hospitalised. However, Christmas was approaching, case numbers were so high, some Councils tried to shut the schools to stop the spread but the end of term came and I was one of the lucky ones, or so I thought. A few days in, I was so tired, I couldn’t stay awake, I was coughing, eating was like swallowing razor blades, both my young children were sick but I still had the hope that we had been in time not to give it to my mum and dad. Then the phone call came, Mum was sick, then Dad.
The next ten days were the worst days of my life. I was on my knees each day alone with the children in my house five minutes from where my parents lived begging God to spare them. I was ringing them four/five times a day. The news was full of stories about no ambulances, no treatment, death and more death. Our whole community was decimated as Covid swept through it.
I am lucky that both my parents survived. I was luckier than many people I work with and many of my students who knew that they’d brought Covid home. How do you live with that?
In January, the Primary schools opened then shut. Who knows how many people died as a result of that one day?
We then got told we were moving to remote learning. Many of us were parents of small children that we needed to home school while preparing lessons to deliver to students online using cut-price learning platforms and ancient technology. I had to buy a new laptop as my old one was so slow, it cost £500 as prices were pushed up so high. I stayed up until midnight every night during the week to prepare my online lessons, got up the next morning and taught my own children from 7am to 9am then taught online all day.
If anybody ever tells you that remote learning works, they know nothing about teaching. Where is the magic of the classroom? The great moments when ‘the penny drops’, the additional things you do to ensure that everybody is accessing the lesson, the instant feedback, the fun? It was all gone and replaced by me staring day after day at myself on camera while my students kept their cameras off due to ‘safeguarding’ and I talked into a microphone desperately trying to get feedback from lacklustre (at best) students sitting wanly in their bedrooms.
The good thing that has come out of the pandemic is that I will never take for granted again going into school, teaching, seeing my colleagues and my students.
When I consider that in May 2020, Gavin Wiliamson and Matt Hancock were trading insults about teachers, it is repugnant to me. Gavin Williamson oversaw the most moronic debacle in the history of exams in which he effectively betrayed a generation while Matt Hancock was critising the work ethic of me and my colleagues while giving million pound contracts to his neighbours and conducting an affair while my students sat shivering in freezing classrooms.
Perhaps if either one of them had come and had to face my students day in day out and live through the nonsensical government instructions about ‘keeping people safe in schools’, if they had experienced the fear and loneliness of my students, their parents and my colleagues, they may have spent more time doing their jobs properly rather than betraying us with their ineptitude and smug arrogance.
