Teaching unions have reacted with fury to leaked texts sent by the former education secretary Gavin Williamson at the height of the Covid pandemic, saying they reveal the UK government’s “secret contempt for teachers”.
Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the exchange between Williamson and the then health secretary, Matt Hancock, exposed “the chaos and duplicity at the heart of government”.
Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said it showed “an appalling lack of respect for teachers” at a time of national emergency when unions were trying to engage constructively with government.
The messages, leaked to the Telegraph, appear to show Williamson accusing teachers of looking for an “excuse” not to teach during the early stages of the Covid pandemic. In another WhatsApp exchange in October 2020, after Williamson announced a delay to exams for the following year, Hancock praised him for his “cracking announcement”, adding: “What a bunch of absolute arses the teaching unions are.”
Williamson replied: “I know they really really do just hate work.”
The former education secretary faced heavy criticism for his handling of the Covid crisis in schools, in particular the 2020 exams fiasco and a number of embarrassing U-turns.
“It was an absolute shambles and the two individuals involved in these snide insults were at the heart of that shambles,” said Barton. “We constantly had to sense-check and disentangle the reams of confused guidance they issued, and were often wrongfooted by bizarre policy decisions which were then followed by an inevitable U-turn.”
The timing of this latest leak will not be helpful to the Department for Education. It came to light as members of the National Education Union (NEU) in London and the south of England prepared to strike in the latest day of industrial action in teachers’ long-running dispute with the government.
Commenting on the lockdown messages, Whitehouse said: “How can any trust develop when the secret contempt for teachers and the teaching profession is laid bare like this? We must not forget Covid was rampant in schools and the whole school community was managing life-threatening risk in the most difficult of circumstances.”
Dr Mary Bousted, the joint general secretary of the NEU, defended the role of teachers and education staff during the pandemic, saying they worked tirelessly, listening to the science and acting to protect the school community when the government was doing neither.
“Government dragged their feet over providing laptops for children most in need, while it took the footballer Marcus Rashford to shame them into free school meals provision during the school holidays. Evidence that could have curbed the impact of Covid, resulting in wider lockdowns, was ignored, and they gave consistently late information to headteachers on the latest measures being imposed by government on schools and colleges. It was nothing short of a shambles,” she said.
“The education secretary was clearly out of his depth and, we now hear, contemptuous of unions and teachers. 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.”
The shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said the leaked comments were “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.”
The Liberal Democrat education spokesperson, Munira Wilson, said: “Gavin Williamson was a disgraceful education secretary and these comments solidify his place in history as one of the worst ministers ever to grace government.”
The schools minister, Nick Gibb, attempted to defend Williamson. He told LBC: “Gavin’s own wife is a primary school teacher – I’ve worked with Gavin for two years; I know he holds teachers in the highest regard. We all in government hold teachers in the highest regard, both during the pandemic and in normal times as well. People say things in the heat of the moment on WhatsApp that they don’t really believe.”
On unions, he said: “I think they work hard for their members. I wish they were with us now negotiating pay and all the other issues that we want to talk about with the teacher unions, so we wouldn’t be having the strike that’s happening in London and the south-east today.”
In a statement on Wednesday, Williamson said: “Further to reports in the Telegraph and other outlets, I wish to clarify that these messages were about some unions and not teachers. 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.”
Speaking after the publication of the leaked WhatsApp messages, the former children’s commissioner for England Anne Longfield, who held that post during the pandemic, said children were not prioritised as they should have been. “I spent an awful lot of time putting forward the kind of policies that needed to be thought about if children were going to get the support they needed during this very, very uncertain time for them,” she told Sky News.
Most children were out of school for six months, and since then anxiety has increased and mental health has “plummeted”, she said. “So children are living with the impact of what happened during that time right now, today.
“It’s very clear to me that children were not given the priority they should have been. There was not enough discussion about the impact of decisions on children’s wellbeing and as a consequence it feels they were quite overlooked often, in terms of the big decisions that were made.”
