Schools are “concerned” about the lack of information over how the government’s “living with Covid” strategy will affect them, the head of a school leaders’ union has warned.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that the government’s plans were “sketchy”, and that he feared the detail that the sector needed would be supplied with “little advance warning”, leaving leadership teams scrambling to make sense of the guidance and implement it.
In an email sent to heads last week, the education secretary Nadhim Zahawi said that the Department for Education would set out in more detail what government plans for living with Covid meant for schools “in due course”.
Speaking in the Commons last week, prime minister Boris Johnson said that all remaining Covid restrictions, including the legal rule to self-isolate, could be scrapped in England later this month.
At the time, the NAHT school leaders’ union warned that the change wouldn’t stop the disruption being seen in schools.
And now, Mr Barton has said that, while ASCL understands the desire to “live with Covid”, the plans needed to be implemented with a “degree of care”.
He said: “Once again, the government has announced a sketchy national plan, which obviously has implications for how transmission is controlled in schools and colleges, without the vital detail that the sector requires.
“We fear that this detail will be supplied with little advance warning and that leadership teams will then have to scramble to make sense of it and implement the new guidance.
“We do understand the desire to ‘live with Covid’ rather than to press on with a battery of control measures indefinitely, but this does need to be done with a degree of care.”
Concerns over free Covid tests being scrapped
Mr Barton also expressed fears over reports that free lateral flow and PCR tests are set to be scrapped next week.
The LBC radio station reported that the plans are part of the government’s “living with Covid” strategy, to be launched on Monday.
Responding to the reports, Mr Barton said he would be “surprised” if lateral flow tests were immediately removed from schools and colleges, and said it would seem “prudent” to continue with the current testing regimes while case rates are so high
He added that removing these tests “runs the risk of worsening the ongoing disruption that is taking place”, and said that pupils and staff are often absent “not only because they have tested positive but because they are ill.”
He continued: “In the longer term, it is easy to envisage situations in which the provision of some supply of lateral flow tests would be helpful, for example where there is a Covid outbreak or a new variant.”
Tes has contacted the DfE for comment.
