Commenting as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
Education answers emergency questions in the House of Commons
today on keeping schools open in face of Covid and the new
omicron variant, Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school
leaders’ union NAHT, said:
“Everyone is concerned about how the impact of the new variant
will play out over the next few weeks and the implications for
January. No-one wants to see the sort of disruption to education
that we experienced last winter.
“School leaders are telling me that this has been the hardest
term of the whole pandemic. There has been a significant jump in
Covid cases in schools over the last week, amongst both staff and
pupils, as the new variant has started to spread.
“School leaders remember all too clearly the chaos and
last-minute government decisions that took place last year and
will be making contingency plans in case the situation gets
worse. That is just the sensible and responsible thing to do.
“It is essential that government give schools as much notice as
possible if they are planning to make any changes to the guidance
for January. Whilst we recognise this is a rapidly changing
situation, we cannot have a repeat of last year where schools
were given less than 24 hours’ notice of important changes.
“The government needs to think very carefully about the
mitigations it needs to take to keep schools open next term.
Ventilation is crucial in the fight against the spread of Covid
in classrooms but the government is not providing air
purification devices for all schools. We simply cannot work on
the basis that only those schools that can afford air
purification devices are able to access them. The government owes
all children a safe and comfortable environment in which to
learn, with minimum disruption to education. If air purifiers can
help with that, then they must be available to all.
“The government also needs to remove unnecessary burdens like
inspection, pointless assessment exercises and other bureaucratic
procedures that feed the Westminster machine but do little to
support schools at this difficult time."
