England manager suggests parents should ‘write an excuse for school’
The largest teaching union has called for schools to be able to offer a ‘flexible start’ on Monday, after England coach Thomas Tuchel said that children should be able to stay up late to watch England take on Mexico in the football World Cup.
Following their 2-1 victory over DR Congo on Wednesday, England will now meet Mexico in the last 16, kicking off at 1am BST (6pm local time) at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City. During a press conference following the match with DR Congo, Mr Tuchel was asked if he had a message for parents. He replied: ‘Write an excuse for school and let them watch football. Come on, there’s so much school to go to, but the World Cup is every four years. Let them watch. There will be a big, big match on in four days, and we need the support of everyone, and especially of the children.’
However, ministers and politicians were quick to respond with words of warning. Speaking to LBC on Thursday, education minister Baroness Jacqui Smith said: ‘I don’t want to be a killjoy here, but I’ll tell you what the biggest killjoy is – young people who then don’t have the learning to be able to go on and do what they need to do in life. I quite understand if people want to watch the match, including young people; I will be. I’ll be having a little disco nap in the afternoon, and I’ll be celebrating our victory the next morning when I go into work, looking obviously as fresh as a daisy.’
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: ‘It is up to parents to make their own decisions. We want everyone to enjoy the game but children should be at school on Monday.’
Meanwhile education secretary Bridget Phillipson commented: ‘I’m not going to get involved in parents and their bedtime routines for their children; that isn’t a wise move for a politician. It’s a late game, but children can be in school the next day’. She added that she thought that it would be possible for some children, depending on their age, to watch the game and be in school the next day, but reiterated that this was a decision ‘for individual families’.
However, Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union called on Phillipson to take a different approach, saying: ‘It would be very good, I think, if the secretary of state recognised that it’s an important event in our calendar and allowed a flexible start on that Monday morning. These are such important events in our calendar, and it would be good if as many young people as possible could [watch the match]’. Earlier this year Mr Kebede said that teachers should be given greater ‘flexibility’ to enable them to attend events such as the Glastonbury festival.
During the World Cup group stages, Scotland played Haiti in a match that kicked off at 2am BST on Sunday 14 June. Following a proposal from the Scottish government, the King then gave permission for the following day, Monday 15June, to be a bank holiday in Scotland. This meant some (though not all) Scottish schools closed on that day. There have been calls for the UK government to follow suit and declare a bank holiday in England on Monday 6 July, but the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has already confirmed there are no plans to do so.
The Department for Education has previously carried out research which highlighted that annual and one-off events could be a driver of short term school absences, citing the example of a spike in absences around a Taylor Swift concert in Liverpool in 2024. Figures released by the BBC suggest a peak audience of 16.3 million people watched the England v DR Congo game, which kicked off at 5pm BST. Given the much later kick-off time of the match against Mexico, viewing figures are likely to be substantially lower, but any perceived impact on school attendance will be hotly debated.