More than a third of secondary schools did not open to up to extra Year 10 and 12 pupils last week as the government had wanted, new data shows.
Ministers had said they wanted secondary schools to offer some “face-to-face support” to students in Years 10 and 12 from Monday 15 June, to supplement learning done at home.
But today’s data shows that only an estimated 60 per cent of secondaries that are normally open to Years 10 and 12 welcomed back more students from at least one of those year groups.
School reopenings: 40,000 more teachers return to classroom
Compare: Two in three schools were open to more pupils on 11 June
Coronavirus: Reopening schools had more Year 6 pupils back than infants
The Department for Education’s plan was that secondary schools should have no more than a quarter of their Year 10 and 12 cohort in attendance at any one time, in order to help to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
Coronavirus: More teachers back at school
But less than one in six Year 10 students (15 per cent) attended open schools, far short of the government’s 25 per cent limit, according to the statistics published by the DfE.
For Year 12, the figure was 14 per cent.
It was also revealed today that the number of teachers working in all schools rose by 40,000 last week.
Overall, the DfE estimates that 92 per cent of schools were open in some capacity on 18 June - the same proportion as on 11 June.
And approximately 12.2 per cent of pupils (1,160,000) attended schools in England on that date, compared with 9.1 per cent (868,000) the previous week.