Britain’s biggest teaching union has criticised ministers for a lack of commitment to students wearing masks in school.
Children’s minister Vicky Ford said today that mask-wearing should be “strongly encouraged” rather than mandatory because some students will be “very anxious and nervous” about wearing face coverings.
But Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said that al students should wear masks unless there was a medical reason, and that ministers shouldn’t be “equivocating” about the matter, especially as government guidelines say mask-wearing in secondary schools will reduce virus transmission.
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Speaking to Sky News this morning, Dr Bousted said she didn’t believe students should be suspended if they refused to wear a mask, but said wearing masks was about “suppressing transmission” and “caring for school communities”.
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She was asked by a reporter: “The children’s minister [Vicky Ford] has said that no child should suffer educationally if they refused to wear a mask and I just wondered what the senior management teams are saying to you this morning? If they introduce a rule whereby they demand it of their kids, do you think that there could be scope for children being suspended, perhaps being excluded, if they refuse to do so?”
Dr Bousted replied: “No one would want it to come to that. But I do think it’s really poor form for the children’s minister to say that, because it is the department’s own guidelines that say that mask-wearing in secondary schools will reduce transmission of the virus.
“Masks are required by everyone in shops, in public buildings, in all sorts of places, so if they are required in schools to suppress the transmission of the virus, then that is something which all children and young people in school should do, unless there is a medical reason why they wouldn’t.
“This isn’t primarily actually about their safety, it’s about suppressing the virus transmission and it’s about caring for your school community, so I think government ministers have to think really carefully. They have said to schools, ‘We expect mask-wearing throughout secondary schools in the classroom and in the corridor.’ If that’s what they expect, they should not be equivocating about it before it’s introduced. They should be supporting schools in ensuring that masks are worn.”
