Teachers have expressed alarm at changes to test and trace arrangements in schools under which single Covid cases are no longer being followed up by “tier 1” staff in local health protection teams (HPTs).
The Department of Health says that, instead, single cases will be handled by “tier 2” contact tracing staff, leaving “highly-specialist” tier 1 staff to concentrate on “dealing with outbreaks”.
But teachers have taken to Twitter to express concern, including one, who tweeted a page from the guidance, who said: “This is a death sentence to so many of my colleagues in the education sector.”
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He said: “In other words [it’s saying] wait until there’s an outbreak before local teams even know there’s been a positive test already in a school.”
The tweet attracted hundreds of likes, retweets and comments, including from @justjen1915, who said: “This is sickening. No thought or consideration to anyone who is clinically extremely vulnerable: educational staff, pupils, parents/carers and wider school staff are being treated like we don’t matter to anyone.”
But a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said that the NHS Test and Trace resource had “not been reduced for schools”.
The spokesperson said: “We are developing the skills of tier 2 contact tracing staff so they can manage a broader range of cases. This change was always intended so that highly specialist staff could target their efforts to control outbreaks
“A single case linked to an educational setting will be handled through professional clinical contact tracing staff via tier 2, instead of being treated as a complex case. Any potential outbreak will still be fully investigated.”
Meanwhile, the Association of School and College Leaders said that positive cases in schools didn’t necessarily need escalating to HPTs, but called for guidance to schools to be consistent.
Julie McCulloch, ASCL’s director of policy, said: “We understand the need to triage positive cases so that where the process for isolating close contacts is relatively straightforward this can be done rapidly on the advice of the DfE helpline without the need to be escalated to local health protection teams.
“But it is important that information about positive cases is communicated across different health teams and with local authorities and that the guidance which is given to schools is consistent. We have heard from schools that this is not always the case and while we appreciate that the situation is very challenging for all concerned it is vital that everybody sings from the same hymn sheet.”
The DfE said that the Department of Health and Social Care was best placed to comment.
