Education secretary Gavin Williamson has said “it would be very misleading” to imply that the reopening of schools to certain year groups last month was linked to the spike of coronavirus cases in Leicester.

Schools in the city were ordered to close again by health secretary Matt Hancock after the city was made subject to the UK’s first local lockdown.

But Mr Williamson told today’s Downing Street press briefing: “What happened in Leicester was not something about schools returning. Schools play an incredibly positive part and role in the wider society and it would be very misleading to imply they had a role in terms of any form of spread in Leicester.”

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However, Mr Hancock told Radio 4‘s Today programme earlier this week that schools in Leicester were closing to “slow the spread” of the virus.

And NEU teaching union leader Mary Bousted described his response as an admission that schools are a cause of transmission.

Coronavirus: Schools ‘creating safe environments’

At today’s briefing, Mr Williamson was asked: “After what’s happened in Leicester, are you telling parents that there is absolutely no additional risk in sending their children back into groups of maybe 250 pupils?”

He replied: “What we’ve seen in terms of returning school is the creation of safe environments and that’s the type of environment we’re going to be creating as every child returns back to school.”

Also speaking at the briefing, deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries suggested that, as “quite controlled environments”, schools may actually be the safest place for children.

“The original guidance recognised that the transmission risks were potentially more in the social behaviours of the teenagers - the older children - out of school than they potentially were in school,” she said.

“So I think probably it’s a real message - school is quite a controlled environment, and perhaps trying to encourage families as well to - I know it’s difficult because I’ve been there - but to try and control their teenagers in their social interactions outside school as well.”

She continued: “We have a community transmission picture in Leicester. There are clearly pockets around the areas where we could see perhaps more cases, but it’s very much through young people and working-age people right across. So this is not a picture of a particular focal point, and certainly not on schools.

“Just to reiterate, schools are actually quite controlled environments. They’re a bit like workplaces.

“In many ways, we should be more concerned with what the teenagers are doing outside school. So if they are in school, in a controlled environment with hierarchies of control and people keeping an eye on them, if you like, that’s probably a much lower risk than if they were out of school doing their own thing.”