School is back in session … so long as your classroom hasn’t collapsed

Good morning! And commiserations to any young readers and teachers who have had to set their alarms today for the first time in six weeks. I feel your pain, and hope you at least have a nice new pencil case to soften the blow.

Most pupils in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are already back in class, but many English schools are reopening their doors this week. Unless, of course, they are one of the more than 150 suddenly told by the government on Thursday that they would have to find alternative accommodation due to the presence of a particularly crumbly kind of concrete.

Even headteachers whose buildings have not been condemned face rising woes, whether recruiting physics teachers, dealing with a post-Covid spike in persistent absenteeism or worrying that their staff will go on strike.

Consider today’s newsletter your start of term revision lesson on the challenges facing schools this year. Helping me in class are headteacher Ben Davis – Mr Davis to you and to the students of St Ambrose Barlow high school in Salford – and Micon Metcalfe, head of finance for a multi-academy trust in London.

Here are the headlines.

Five big stories

In depth: ‘This is not a return to the dark days of school lockdowns’

Are our schools safe?

Most of them, yes. There are more than 20,000 schools in England and 572 may contain unsafe reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), according to a National Audit Office (NAO) report published in June. The Scottish government says it is present in 35 schools, but that none posed an “immediate risk” to pupil safety, with the Welsh and Northern Irish administrations still working on their own assessments.

According to schools minister, Nick Gibb, the dramatic move to tell 156 English schools to shut in full or part last week came after a beam in one school suddenly collapsed over the summer.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt spent most of yesterday in the hot seat, declaring he would “spend what it takes” to deal with the concrete crisis. This pledge was undermined within hours when treasury sources briefed that money for repairs would come from the Department for Education’s (DfE) existing capital budget.

Meanwhile, the education secretary Gillian Keegan dodged the broadcasters, instead opting to interview herself in this bizarre YouTube video, in which she insists “nothing is more important than the health and safety of children” above a pumping sound track. Both she and Hunt have been quick to dispel suggestions that the issue could result in home-schooling.

“I want to reassure families that this is not a return to the dark days of school lockdowns,” she said. Keegan is expected out on this morning’s media round.

Are there enough teachers?

A record 40,000 teachers in England – almost 9% of the total – resigned from state education last year, the latest DfE workforce survey shows, while about 4,000 retired. Meanwhile, the number of teacher vacancies increased from 1,600 in November 2021 to 2,300 in November 2022.

While Ben Davis’s school in Salford is starting the autumn term fully staffed, he counts himself “extremely lucky”. Nearby schools have “big holes in their staffing”, he says. Finding science teachers is hardest, “by a country mile”.

He wants the DfE to think seriously about how to make teaching a more attractive profession, “compared with other more flexible forms of working life”. Then there are the pressures, particularly from the Ofsted inspection regime, which was implicated in the suicide of one head earlier this year and caused Davis such stress he developed a heart condition. “There is no doubt that Ofsted is a factor which is driving teachers away,” he says.

What about strikes?

Teachers are unlikely to go on strike again, having agreed a 6.5% pay rise, but support staff such as teaching assistants and catering assistants are being balloted for industrial action, says Micon Metcalfe, who is the chief financial officer for the Diocese of Westminster Trust, which runs 11 schools.

“If they strike it will have a bigger impact on our primary schools, where you have a higher proportion of support staff compared with teaching staff,” she says.

Budget-wise, the real challenge is funding the steep rise in support needed for children with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities. Schools receive £6,000 for each SEN child, with anything needed above that supposedly coming from cash-strapped local authorities but rarely plugging the gap.

Will the children even turn up?

Persistent absenteeism and a “wellbeing crisis” among young people pose the “single biggest challenges” for Davis in the year ahead.

Last year in England saw 17% of primary school pupils and 28% of mainstream secondary school pupils classed as persistently absent, more than double the figures of 8% and 13.7% recorded in 2018-19. “We’ve seen a massive increase in severe absences of below 50%,” says Davis, with persistent absenteeism doubling in some year groups.

In the Guardian’s Saturday magazine this past weekend, Gaby Hinsliff interviewed the parents of children who have not returned to school post-Covid, finding that poorer children with special educational needs were particularly likely to have stayed at home.

Davis says Covid exacerbated a growing problem, with young people “experiencing dislocation in their community, the loss of family members, plus the cost of living crisis. If you look at our current year seven, they have a much higher incidence of free school meals than the outgoing year 10.”

There has been a loss of faith in the education system and particularly the exam system following Covid, he adds. Schools cannot fix these problems alone. “This is really about structural inequalities in society.”

What else we’ve been reading

It’s hard to believe that this week marks one year since Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership began. In this impressively comprehensive article, Aubrey Allegretti looks at how everything fell apart within 49 days. Nimo

“I had a whole wave of abuse after Elon Musk shared a tweet about me.” Zoe Williams interviews Marianna Spring, the BBC’s first specialist disinformation and social media correspondent. Should the BBC allow one woman to become the face of everything extremists hate about the institution? Helen

Holidays are expensive and, counterintuitively, the desire to have the maximum amount of fun and relaxation possible often causes considerable levels of stress to travellers. In the Atlantic (£), Arthur C Brooks lays out the deceptively simple answer to avoid a lot of this anxiety: match your holiday to your personality. Nimo

Plain Jane Superbrain is back! Sian Cain visits the Neighbours set to talk to the stars of the newly rebooted soap as they reflect on their return to Erinsborough. Helen

David Smith’s interview with the Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gives interesting insight into the evolving role that she plays in American politics as she deals with rightwing trolls on the one hand and accusations of selling out by fellow progressives on the other. Nimo

Sport

Football | Odsonne Édouard and Eberechi Eze shone during their Premier League match against Wolverhampton. Their impressive performance led Crystal Palace to a 3-2 victory against the Wolves at Selhurst Park. Two late strikes from Declan Rice and Fernando Gabriel Jesus pushed Arsenal to a 3-1 victory at home against Manchester United.

Tennis | It took Coco Gauff three sets to halt the momentum working against her in the tension filled fourth-round battle against Danish wildcard Caroline Wozniacki, winning 6-3, 3-6, 6-1 to reach the quarter-finals of the US Open. Ben Shelton powered past his fellow American, Tommy Paul, to reach the US Open quarter-finals where he will face another countryman in Frances Tiafoe.

Formula One | Max Verstappen (pictured above) won the Italian Grand Prix for Red Bull, completing a record-breaking 10th consecutive victory. Verstappen swept the competition away, beating his teammate Sergio Pérez into second and the Ferraris of Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc into third and fourth.

The front pages

The Guardian leads off with “Schools crisis: no extra cash for repairs, says Treasury”. The Times reports “Hundreds of schools still in dark over safety fears”, while the i follows the same story with “Hunt vows to make schools safe at any cost, but there’s no new money”.

Elsewhere, the Telegraph says “Sunak yields on onshore wind farms”. The Mirror carries an exclusive, with a set of new tax pledges from Keir Starmer under the headline “My promise to workers”.

The Financial Times leads with “Russia’s banks propped up by Chinese cash after sanctions”. The Mail reports “Councils allow staff to ‘work from the beach’”. Finally the Sun carries extracts from rugby star Danny Cipriani’s new book, under the headline “England coach grilled me over sex life with Kirsty”.

Today in Focus

Cartoon of the day | Edith Pritchett

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The Upside

A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad

Until she was 60, Dorrit Bøilerehauge primarily worked in academia, business and fashion communication. But after her striking style attracted the attention of a modelling agency who had scouted her for a job, her life changed. Bøilerehauge was initially hesitant, but her two daughters and colleagues encouraged her to give it a go.

Three years since that first email, Bøilerehauge divides her time between academic work, modelling and social media influencing. She has become an advocate for age diversity and challenges the idea that beauty is something that is only experienced by younger people. “We should embrace age,” Bøilerehauge says. “The more people who do that, the better it gets.”

Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday

Bored at work?

And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.

Quick crossword

Cryptic crossword

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