Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, in the context of the rise of omicron covid-19 variant cases, what additional support he has made available to education providers in (a) St Helens North constituency and (b) the North West region to improve ventilation in the various sets of teaching environments.

Throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, the department has emphasised the importance of ventilation and provided guidance to education providers on ventilation requirements. The department has always stated that where an education provider is in operation it is important to ensure that it is well ventilated and that a comfortable teaching environment is maintained.

During the autumn term, the department provided CO2 monitors to all state-funded education providers, including early years, schools, and further education providers, backed by £25 million in government funding. The department has now delivered on its public commitment with over 353,000 monitors delivered. The programme provided schools and other education providers with sufficient monitors to take representative readings from across their estate. Feedback suggests that schools are finding the monitors helpful to manage ventilation and, in the majority of education providers, existing ventilation measures are sufficient.

For the very few cases where maintaining good ventilation is not possible, the department is supplying up to a total of 7,000 air cleaning units in response to this feedback to settings. This is in addition to the 1,000 department-funded air cleaning units that we announced on 18 November for special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision providers. Providers can apply for funded units via an online form. Applications are open until 9am on 17 January. Applications will be assessed against strict criteria for their setting type.  We will prioritise spaces with the poorest ventilation to receive units based on criteria such as CO2 levels and occupation density.

The department has also launched an online marketplace, which provides education providers with a route to purchasing air cleaning units directly from suppliers at a suitable specification and competitive price. Further information is available here: https://s107t01-webapp-v2-01.azurewebsites.net/list/air-cleaning. In future, we may review this list and as more products which meet our specification become available, these will be added.