Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what additional plans are in place to support schools that have been impacted by teacher absences as a result of the Omicron variant of covid-19.

Our priority is to maintain high quality face-to-face education for all children and young people.

There are measures in place to help break the chains of COVID-19 transmission, minimise disruption to education and limit absences. These include regular testing, improving ventilation in classrooms and continuing the booster rollout for adults and vaccinations for secondary age pupils.

The department has reintroduced the COVID-19 workforce fund to provide financial support to eligible schools and colleges for additional staff absence costs incurred from 22 November until the February spring half term in 2022. The fund is available to support schools and colleges facing the greatest staffing and funding pressures to continue to deliver high quality face-to-face education to all pupils.

The department has also called for ex-teachers to return to the classroom and, on 12 January, it published initial data from a sample of supply agencies gathered between 20 December 2021 and 7 January 2022. This showed that 485 former teachers have signed up with supply agencies, and over 100 Teach First alumni have also expressed interest in returning to the classroom.

Given the size of the sample, the true number of sign-ups since the call was launched will be larger. Full details of the data release can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/number-of-ex-teachers-joining-the-school-workforce-2021-to-2022.

We have also published sector-led case studies that illustrate practical ways in which schools can work to remain open in the face of staff shortage. Our priority is that all schools offer in-person learning for all pupils. This might involve hybrid lessons, remote teaching, streaming teaching to more than one class at a time, combining face-to-face classes, timetable solutions and using recorded teaching.