Scotland’s education secretary has revealed that school staff working with children with complex needs who are “undertaking tasks that are essentially health and social care-style activity” will be vaccinated in the first wave.
John Swinney stressed that this was not about changing the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) prioritisation groups, but rather it was about making sure that school staff were included.
Mr Swinney said today that he had written to education directors to ask them to identify relevant staff working in education settings.
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Today, Mr Swinney told a meeting of the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee: “We have, in fact, written to directors of education to ask them to identify the staff that are undertaking tasks in relation to the support of young people with complex needs that are essentially of equivalence to health and social care-style activity, so that they can be included in the group of staff who, already under JCVI criteria, are eligible for the vaccine.
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“So it’s not changing the JCVI approach. It is simply adding in members of staff in an educational setting who are undertaking tasks that are essentially health and social care-style activity, albeit in an education setting, to get the vaccines.
“We have written to directors of education to essentially get them to identify the relevant staff and they will be vaccinated, and I’m happy to confirm that to committee today.”
The news follows first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s announcement yesterday that the government is planning for pupils to begin returning to school in the week beginning 22 February, with additional support needs (ASN) pupils among those to be prioritised.
The other groups due to get back to face-to-face learning first are preschool children, children in P1 to P3, and some senior secondary students who will return part-time to complete “practical work” necessary for qualifications.
The extension of the vaccination programme is likely to be welcomed by ASN teachers. A group of teachers wrote to Mr Swinney last month questioning why they were not being prioritised for vaccination.
They pointed out that school nurses, who worked in the same buildings as them, were rightly being vaccinated but that they actually had less contact with learners.
The letter said: “We provide personal care to our pupils, we provide medical care for our pupils and we perform assisted feeding, including gastroscopy feeding for our pupils. Yet we are not classed as a frontline care service.”
In some authorities special schools have remained open since the decision was taken to move to remote learning for the majority of pupils.
On Friday, overall, 7 per cent of pupils in Scotland were attending local authority schools - but attendance was highest in special schools, where around 17 per cent of pupils were in school.
