Early years staff to pupil ratios can be relaxed as schools and settings struggle to stay open amid high staff absences due to Covid, the Department for Education has said today.
In a letter to providers, the DfE says “the government considers Covid-19 to be an exceptional circumstance” and that staff to child ratios set out in the early years foundation stage “can temporarily be changed”.
The new guidance details that ratios of teachers to pupils “should be guided by all relevant requirements and by the needs of individual children within the group”.
It adds that for the purposes of meeting EYFS ratio and qualification requirements, all staff educating or caring for mixed-age groups of children can be considered “available to work directly with” all of the children who have been grouped together.
At the beginning of this term, education secretary Nadhim Zahawi told school staff that classes may have to combine to stay open and prevent closures, however, he was criticised for ignoring primary schools in his guidance.
Last week, Tes reported that primary schools were bringing back bubbles and staggered starts amid high Covid rates in primary pupils.
Primary school-aged pupils had the second highest Covid rates in the week ending 31 December 2021, with 7.7 per cent testing positive according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) data.
The DfE told Tes that combining classes would be against the law for key stage 1 and that its advice to heads to consider merging classes to cope with teacher absence did not apply to younger pupils as a result.
Under current legislation, infant classes must not contain more than 30 pupils with a single school teacher.
