Scottish schools should have a supply of face coverings that can be given to pupils who may find them harder to get hold of or who simply forget to bring one, first minister Nicola Sturgeon has said.
The Scottish government today published new guidance requiring secondary students to wear face coverings in corridors and communal areas. Pupils aged 5 and over will also have to wear face coverings on school transport.
The new rules are due to come into force on Monday, with the UK government expected to follow suit.
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When asked at today’s daily coronavirus briefing if there would be support for less affluent families to buy coverings - just as there are grants for school uniforms - or if disposable coverings would be available in schools, Ms Sturgeon said the Scottish government would keep that under review. But she added that schools should have a stock of coverings available for pupils.
She said: “There’s already the law that young people wear face coverings in shops and on public transport so we would expect that young people are already getting used to wearing face coverings. But it is important, not just in terms of young people that may find it harder to access face coverings, but [also] a young person might forget to take their face covering to school one morning, so I think it’s going to be important that schools have a supply there they can use for young people.”
Adults and pupils at secondary schools are now advised to wear face coverings in communal spaces where social distancing is difficult, says FM @NicolaSturgeon.
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Ms Sturgeon was also asked how the new rules would be enforced in schools.
She said that, at the moment, if you fail to wear a face covering in a shop, you can be fined - but the government is not proposing that for schools. She added that headteachers understand that does not mean they can ignore government guidance.
“Guidance that is in place for schools is not considered to be voluntary, it is guidance we expect schools to follow,” she said.
On pupils complying with the new rules, she said: “Schools already have behaviour policies in place. They already try to encourage young people to do the right things and dissuade them from doing the wrong things. This is another aspect of that but it is, in my view, much better done in that way, where it’s part of the process of people understanding what we all have to do right now to keep transmission as low as we can.
“I don’t think we should rule anything out when it comes to dealing with Covid, but ideally we don‘t want to have an enforcement regime around this kind of guidance in schools and that’s why I think it’s best dealt with through the normal processes schools will have in place.”
This morning, education secretary John Swinney caused some confusion by saying the new guidance on face coverings was not mandatory, but that schools were obliged to follow it.
He later explained that “mandatory” suggested there would be some kind of enforcement but that it was not the government’s intention that any student should be, for example, excluded from their school for refusing to wear a face covering.
The EIS teaching union has described the introduction of face coverings in schools as “a sensible and appropriate step to reduce the risk of Covid-19 spreading through school communities”.
However, it also believes smaller class sizes to ensure appropriate physical distancing of pupils “are essential”.
In the Scottish Parliament this afternoon, Ross Greer, the Scottish Greens’ education spokesperson, questioned why the changed policy on face coverings would not apply in classes.
He said: “I accept that there are legitimate issues with communication and learning, were masks to be worn in class, but the government’s rationale for not including classrooms in this guidance appears to be that there’s greater scope for social distancing there.” Mr Greer added that “this is not what teachers and pupils are telling me”.
Mr Swinney replied: “That is because in the [new] World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines there is a very clear balancing of the public health benefits versus the potential for undermining education and learning.”
He added that “the guidance from the [Covid-19] educational recovery group is very clear: that in a classroom setting teachers should be exercising two-metre physical distancing from pupils to enable the minimisation of the risk of transmission of the virus. But of course, if individuals wish to wear face coverings they should be free to do so at any stage in the school day.
Scottish Conservative education spokesperson Jamie Greene wanted to clarify why Mr Swinney had said this morning that the new guidance of face coverings was not “mandatory” but was “obligatory”, and whether schools could choose not to ask pupils to use face coverings.
Mr Swinney said that “the guidance that is being set out today is to be applied in all secondary schools in Scotland, without question”, but that the government wanted to avoid a reliance on punitive and legalistic approaches.
He said there would be some exceptions allowed and also “circumstances where young people may be concerned about wearing face coverings”. He explained that “what we are trying to do is to create an approach…of encouraging compliance and working with individuals to secure their compliance, rather than to provide a mandatory legal force”.
