Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi on ITV’s This Morning
Schools should not cancel their Christmas nativities and must stay open despite growing panic about the new Covid variant, the Education Secretary said today.
Nadhim Zahawi made the impassioned plea in an interview with ITV’s This Morning, calling for calm and urging teachers to keep children in schools ahead of the Christmas holiday.
Schoolchildren are being tested for the so-called ‘Omicron’ strain and head teachers have imposed their own ‘circuit breakers’ and sent pupils home as cases are detected – including St Mary’s Primary School in Hertfordshire today.
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman today also dismissed calls from union leaders for schools to break up early for Christmas, saying their education was ‘vital’.
Schools in Surrey have cancelled Christmas nativities after the council told them not to hold large gatherings which could lead to significant mixing of people from different households.
Ministers have ruled that schoolchildren should wear facemasks in ‘communal areas’ including hallways and said close contacts of those who test positive for the new mutation – including children – must self-isolate for 10 days.
Furious parents and MPs have argued that the restrictions will cause ‘chaos’ and further disrupt children’s education.
However, teaching unions are demanding that Ministers go even further. The Association of School and College Leaders called on Ministers to encourage twice-weekly home Covid testing ‘in order to reduce the risk of transmission’, while Dr Mary Bousted, the Joint General-Secretary of the National Education Union, said that facemasks should be extended to classrooms.
Speaking to Radio 4’s Today programme, she said: ‘I have to say that we are disappointed that mask-wearing has not been reintroduced in secondary schools in classrooms as well.
‘If you were on Twitter last night looking at teachers just asking a very simple question, ”Does Covid recognise the difference between a corridor and a classroom?”, clearly it doesn’t. And classrooms are communal places where young people and their teachers spend the majority of their time, and Covid will not recognise the difference between a corridor and a classroom.
‘We have mask-wearing in secondary schools when we returned to school. It was stopped in May as part of the ”Freedom Day”. Mask-wearing in secondary schools has been retained in Scotland and we know that’s the second most effective way of stopping Covid transmission. The first most effective way is effective ventilation.’
Today, the Education Secretary told This Morning hosts Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby that closing schools was the last possible option in the fight against ‘Omicron’.
Mr Zahawi added: ‘Keep schools open: do all the things necessary, like facemasks in communal areas… to protect the education in the classroom. Facemasks are not a panacea… these are all interventions that just help you slow the virus… from accelerating too quickly. Just to give the scientists a bit more time, a bit more headroom to actually decide what do we need to do next.’
The Education Secretary said he disagreed with the idea that there should be a return of bubbles in schools, as ‘that reduces attendance significantly, materially’. On school Christmas concerts, he said: ‘My very strong advice is if you (are) organising nativities, carry on.’
Last week, head teachers at several schools in Hereford and Lancashire shut, while multiple sites in London confirmed Covid outbreaks. In Essex and Suffolk, schools cancelled extracurricular activities including dance and art classes and sports fixtures.
Three cases of the new ‘Omicron’ variant have been detected in England. One patient, in Essex, is said to be not seriously ill and isolating with family. But health chiefs are probing possible contacts they made at a local KFC and school, before knowing they were unwell. Pupils at the school are now being tested for the variant, and possible contacts made at the KFC in Brentwood are also being tracked down.
Teaching unions are demanding that the Government go further by expanding facemasks to classrooms
Today another school imposed a ‘circuit breaker’ and sent its pupils home after just one Covid case was detected among its teachers. St Mary’s Primary School in Hertfordshire is closed today due to a ‘staff shortage’ and will remain shut until all staff are tested for the virus
Ministers have ruled that schoolchildren should wear facemasks in ‘communal areas’ including hallways and said close contacts of those who test positive for the so-called ‘Omicron’ mutation – including children – must self-isolate for 10 days
Some six Covid cases have bene detected in Scotland, taking the UK’s total infections to nine. The other three were detected in Brentwood, pictured, Westminster and Nottingham. Up to 225 ‘possible’ cases are also being investigated
Dr Bousted added: ‘The last thing that anybody wants, certainly teachers, the last thing they want is more disruption in schools. It was a terrible time previously, and it makes education really difficult to have large numbers of pupils at home and the rest in school.
‘It means teachers are teaching in school and trying to prepare online lessons for those at home. And we know that the best place for children and young people is to be in school.
‘So it’s really important that we do all that we can to stop the spread of the virus and of this new variant in schools.’
Campaign group UsForThem, which fought to get schools reopened during the pandemic, warned that ‘forcing health children to isolate’ is an ‘unmitigated disasters’ and called plans to do so ‘unforgivable’.
UsForThem co-founder Molly Kingsley urged Ministers to exempt children from the self-isolation rules, adding that if they don’t ‘it will cause chaos in the classrooms’.
‘Asking health children to quarantine is not a harm-free measure, it is harmful to children who are not at serious risk from the illness. At this point in the pandemic, it is shameful for the Government not to have an exemption for children.’
Tory backbencher Steve Baker, deputy chairman of the lockdown-sceptic Covid Recovery Group, said the Government ‘needs to explain when all of this will be brought to an end’.
And Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, added: ‘We have already seen a staggering number of children who have missed out on education. So we must absolutely be clear that there is no reason why children should not be in school.’
He said that the news rules compelling healthy children to self-isolate should be ‘looked at very carefully in light of the already existing massive problem for children missing education’.
The Department for Education sent an email update to schools and childcare providers which said: ‘Face coverings should be worn in communal areas in all settings by staff, visitors and pupils or students in Year 7 and above, unless they are exempt.
‘Pupils or students (in Year 7 or above) should continue to wear face coverings on public and dedicated school transport, unless they are exempt.’
The update comes after the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) said an individual, who is longer in the country, tested positive for the Omicron variant after travelling to Westminster in London and the infection was ‘linked to travel to southern Africa’.
The Omicron variant is thought to be more transmissible than the currently-dominant Delta variant.
It was first identified in South Africa but has been found in Hong Kong, Belgium and the Netherlands in the days since the World Health Organisation designated it a ‘variant of concern’.
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said: ‘The news of a new variant – the so-called Omicron variant – will have understandably caused concern for people across our country, including our teachers, wider education and childcare staff, parents, pupils and students.
‘We are already taking targeted and proportionate action as a precaution while we find out more information about the new variant.
‘As we do so, we will continue to prioritise children’s and young people’s education and wellbeing, making sure education and childcare settings are as safe as possible and children continue to benefit from classroom teaching.
‘We are working with education and childcare settings to enhance safety measures where needed, including introducing isolation for 10 days for close contacts of suspected Omicron cases.
It comes after another 37,681 Covid cases and 51 deaths were recorded in the UK yesterday
‘I’d like to thank everyone working to support our children and young people for their patience and hard work.’
The guidance is temporary and will be reviewed in three weeks, the Department for Education said.
Students in Year 7 or above should also continue to wear face coverings on public and dedicated school transport, unless they are exempt, the DfE said, and staff and students should continue to be encouraged to test themselves twice a week using lateral flow tests.
The department also said schools, out of school settings and colleges will ‘want to consider’ whether to go ahead with any planned international trips at the current time, given the potential risk to education from the need to isolate and test when returning to the UK.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said it supports the measures ‘as a sensible response to the risks posed by the Omicron variant of Covid-19’.
But he added: ‘This worrying situation, however, emphasises the need for better support from the Government for the education sector.’
Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said: ‘We welcome the DfE guidance that masks must be worn by adults and children in Year 7 and above in communal areas. We think the DfE should go further and encourage mask-wearing in secondary classrooms and also plan investment to improve ventilation and air filtration.
‘These steps can all help reduce the spread of Covid and thereby reduce disruption to education. Omicron makes the threat of disruption of education all the clearer: any close contacts of an Omicron case, staff or pupils, will have to self-isolate for 10 days, whether vaccinated or not.’
Dr Patrick Roach, general secretary of NASUWT – The Teachers’ Union, welcomed the guidance but added: ‘If schools are to maintain safety during the remainder of this term, the Government will need to accept that its messaging needs to be stronger and that the rules governing isolation of close contacts in particular need to be clear and robust.’
He said the Government needs to consider bolstering its advice to require close contacts to self-isolate if they have Covid-19 symptoms, adding: ‘In the event that there is a delay in a pupil getting a PCR test, or refusing to do so, there is a real risk that close contacts of the new Omicron variant will continue to attend schools for longer than is appropriate, potentially putting others at risk of contracting the new variant and of further transmission of the virus in schools and in the wider community.’
Dr Roach said ‘significant numbers of pupils’ do not undertake the recommended twice-weekly lateral flow tests and the Government ‘must identify a more effective strategy for Covid testing to ensure that all schools can continue to remain open safely’, while providing them with the resources to implement essential safety measures.
It comes after another 37,681 Covid cases and 51 deaths were recorded in the UK yesterday.
The number of infections posted by Department of Health officials today is down 5.8 per cent from 40,004 recorded last Sunday, while the number of people who have died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid fell by 16.4 per cent from 61 last week.
Case numbers have been steadily around 30,000-50,000 new cases a day in the UK since the summer with a relatively low number of daily deaths compared to previous waves of the pandemic.
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