Schools: Coronavirus

(asked on 11th June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to support smaller schools with the implementation of Government guidance on social distancing during the covid-19 outbreak.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 19th June 2020

Thanks to the huge efforts everyone has made to adhere to strict social distancing measures, the scientific advice indicates the transmission rate of coronavirus has decreased and, based on all the evidence, we have been able to begin our cautious and phased approach to the wider opening of schools.

We have provided guidance to schools on GOV.UK on implementing protective measures to lower the risk of transmission. These include ensuring that anyone with symptoms does not attend their education settings, promoting high standards of hand and respiratory hygiene, regular cleaning of touched surfaces, and minimising contact and mixing.

School leaders are best placed to understand their own local circumstances and take decisions about what will work for their school buildings, staff and communities.

Each setting’s circumstances will be slightly different. Any primary school that cannot accommodate the smaller groups that we are asking for at any point should discuss options with their local authority or trust. This might be because there are not enough classrooms or spaces available in the setting or because they do not have enough available teachers or staff to supervise the groups. If necessary, settings have the flexibility to focus first on continuing to provide places for priority groups and then, to support children’s early learning, settings should prioritise groups of children as follows:

  • early years settings - 3 and 4 year olds followed by younger age groups
  • infant schools - nursery (where applicable) and reception
  • primary schools - nursery (where applicable), reception and year 1

Our assessment, based on the latest scientific and medical advice, is that we need to continue to control the numbers attending school to reduce the risk of increasing transmission. Therefore, secondary schools are able to have a quarter of the year 10 and year 12 cohort (for schools with sixth forms) in school at any one time.

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