The education secretary is being urged to call on the national health and safety regulator to advise schools about the safety of reopening to more pupils.

The NASUWT teaching union is calling for further guidance from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), as it warns the scientific advice so far published by the government has “failed to provide the assurances employers, teachers and parents need” that a wider reopening of schools will be safe.

It has written to the education secretary Gavin Williamson and work and pensions secretary Thérèse Coffey to argue there is a “strong case” for HSE to provide guidance tailored specifically to schools, offering advice on managing and minimising the Covid-19 risks to pupils and staff.

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Patrick Roach, NASUWT general secretary, said the HSE “has a key role to play” in ensuring that schools are “Covid-secure” and “Covid-compliant”.

He added that he is “surprised” the HSE has not yet provided guidance on risk management in schools ahead of wider reopenings next week.

In the letter to Mr Williamson, Dr Roach said: “The NASUWT recognises that whilst the Department for Education has expertise in matters relating to school organisation and funding, child safeguarding, teaching and learning and associated matters, it does not have equivalent expertise in relation to the management of contagious diseases or in respect of the health and safety issues that have been raised by the coronavirus pandemic.”

Dr Roach said the HSE should compile a “special report” on the risks associated with the wider reopening of schools, to help employers be clear about “what constitutes acceptable levels of risk and how these risks can be appropriately assessed and mitigated for each setting”.

He said this should cover:

• The extent of the health and safety risks to teachers, children and contractors posed by reopening schools and other educational settings.  
• The role of the government’s guidance for schools and other education settings in managing to acceptable levels the risk of transmission of the coronavirus from 1 June 2020.
• How employers should interpret and deploy into a risk assessment the best scientific evidence available, including that considered by Sage, relating to the risks of coronavirus transmission among children and adults in schools and other educations settings. 
• How employers will need to ensure that their school/college workplaces are Covid-secure.

The DfE has been approached for comment.