Headteachers have welcomed moves to help councils quickly set up buffer zones around schools to stop them from being targeted by anti-vaccination protests.
Home secretary Priti Patel said in a letter to MPs today that she would back an amendment from the House of Lords to the controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill that would allow this to happen.
Ms Patel said that the amendment would “enable a local authority to quickly establish a buffer zone around schools and vaccination centres if targeted by harmful and disruptive protests, as have been seen recently from anti-vaxxers”.
A statement from the Home Office added Ms Patel “will point out to MPs the irony of recognising the significant harm that can be caused by protests with this amendment” and will add “that logic follows that it should not just be schools and vaccination centres that are protected”.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said headteachers remain “concerned” that anti-vaccination campaigners are continuing to target schools “despite the vaccination programme for 12- to 15-year-olds having been underway for many months now”.
“The programme is clearly important in reducing the disruption to education and living with Covid,” he said.
Mr Barton added that the amendment was welcomed as an “extra tier of protection”.
He said the protests seen at schools last year were “completely inappropriate and have a profound impact on both the students and staff caught up in them”.
“Potential protests cause more worry at a time when schools are already under huge pressure just trying to cope with the ongoing disruption caused by the pandemic.”
‘Unacceptable’ for any head to be ‘harassed’
Last November, education secretary Nadhim Zahawi told MPs “it was “totally unacceptable” for any headteacher to be “harassed or threatened” by anti-vaccine protestors.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said: “The NAHT is clear that young people should be able to go to and from school without having to worry about protesters interrupting their day. Whatever your views on vaccination, it is never OK to make children feel scared and intimidated as they arrive at school.
“The right to protest is vital to our democratic society, but it must be done appropriately - especially around children.
“Schools are not the place for angry protests. School leaders will welcome being able to work with their local authority and the police to ensure calm and reasonable behaviour at the school gates.
“That said, peaceful protest is a civic right, and not one we would want to see eroded.”
Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi previously said that anti-vaccine protestors should go “nowhere near teachers”.
