Covid-19: Education Settings

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, once again I want to pay tribute to all education staff, pupils and parents, who have done so much over the past 16 months to ensure that children and young people were able to have as much learning as was possible in the most trying of circumstances.

Last week, in a repeat of an Urgent Question in your Lordships’ House, I asked the Minister to confirm that parents, pupils and teachers would know what was to happen in September to school bubbles, before this term ends, allowing school leaders time to put plans in place and give their staff a desperately needed break over the summer. Naturally, it is satisfying that the Government responded to my personal plea with a Statement made by the Secretary of State two days ago, but only up to a point.

The main restrictions on education and childcare are ending with effect from 19 July. With more than 640,000 children in England absent from school last week due to Covid, whether that is the right thing to do, just days before the school year ends, is questionable. The summer holidays act as a natural circuit breaker, and surely it would have been preferable to use that as the end point for restrictions that were unhelpful for learning but were necessary to minimise the spread of Covid.

The Government have been desperate to do something—anything—to meet the clamour from many of their MPs and their supporters in the media, but the new Health Secretary was candid in his admission, a few days ago, that England was entering what he termed as “uncharted territory” in its wholesale scrapping of lockdown rules from 19 July. New infections could easily rise above 100,000 a day over the summer, he said—more than at any point in the pandemic. The concern felt by many parents and children, at the sweeping away of the current system for containing Covid outbreaks in schools, colleges and nurseries, is understandable.

The Statement says that by 19 July, grouping pupils into protective bubbles within schools, colleges and nurseries in England will no longer be required, along with several other preventive measures. The use of self-isolation for children with close contacts will end in mid-August. Last week, when I invited the Minister to explain why secondary pupils had no longer been required to wear masks in classrooms from mid-May, at a time when cases were rising and masks still had to be worn in shops and indoor spaces, she replied it was done on the advice of Public Health England. Is that also the basis of the Government’s latest guidance removing requirements such as staggered school start and finish times, social distancing and the recommendations for the wearing of masks in communal areas, and—where bubbles have never been able to be enforced—on school transport? If so, will the Government publish the data that informed those decisions?

Doing away with bubbles from 19 July means more schools will have just a few days before the end of term. Many, I suspect, will feel it is not worth changing until the new term. Of course, by then some will already have begun their summer holidays. When the Secretary of State delivered the Statement in another place on Tuesday, he was asked several questions by my colleague Kate Green MP. Not many received a response, so I will repeat some and offer the Minister the opportunity of addressing these issues.

The DfE has run pilots using testing instead of the bubble system in schools, but that was not mentioned in the Statement. What were the results of the pilot, using daily testing in some schools? Did this mean more hours in the classroom? Did it result in more cases being detected? If the JCVI does propose vaccinating older children, is the Minister confident that the necessary infrastructure to begin that process will be in place before schools return in September?

Also, with regard to exams in 2022, the Secretary of State said on Tuesday that mitigations would be put in place to take account of the fact that many children, facing exams in the forthcoming academic year, particularly year 10, had missed a great deal of school over the past year. What sort of mitigation has been considered by the DfE to support children caught in that situation? Given the chaos and confusion that reigned both last year and this year, those young people deserve to know, when they arrive for the new term, what format of exam system they will face.

Our aim with these questions is not to catch the Government out. We genuinely want pupils to return to school after their summer break knowing what to expect, and for their parents to have confidence that sensible and effective measures to keep everyone as safe as possible from a further spread of Covid are in place. I look to the Minister for reassurance that that is not too much to ask.

[Lord Storey (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I add my thanks to all those teachers and support staff, children and young people. I am surprised that this is being done now and we have not waited until the beginning of the autumn term, which is literally only a few days away.

The Minister’s Statement is made against a backdrop of rising cases. School outbreaks are up to the highest level all year and rising sharply. Children, of course, remain unvaccinated, at risk of transmitting the virus and suffering from long Covid themselves. The Government have consistently claimed to be following the scientific advice before making decisions. Will the Minister publish the results of their trials on daily contact testing as an alternative to self-isolation?

We now know so much more about Covid-19 than we did a year ago, yet the Government are not learning lessons from either the knowledge that we have gained about the virus or the effective measures taken in different countries. We know that airborne transmission is the main way that Covid-19 is spreading. Countries such as Germany have invested in upgrading air-conditioning units and providing mobile purifiers. What are the Government here doing to improve ventilation in our schools?

In the Statement, the Minister says that education settings

“will continue to have a role in working with health protection teams in the case of a local outbreak. Where necessary, some measures may need to be reintroduced.”

What are the measures that will be reintroduced? The Minister says that, in classrooms or communal areas, face masks and social distancing will no longer be required. Does that include whole-school assemblies, or the daily act of worship in Church schools?

The requirement for a staggered start and finish time for schools and colleges can continue until the end of the summer term if schools wish. Is it sensible to have hundreds of children and students leaving schools and colleges at the same time, with, for younger children, hundreds of parents at the school gates to meet them? What is the scientific advice to stop staggering school start and finish times? If a school wishes to continue staggering the start and finish of its school day, can it do so?

Like the noble Lord, Lord Watson, I want to see as many children in school as possible and I want to see children and staff safe. The Statement is not a plan to deal with Covid-19 in our schools; it is lettered with instances of “maybe”, “we should” or “we advise schools to”. It ends with these words:

“children and young people will be able to get on with their education and lives”.

But if Covid is ripping through our schools, colleges and universities, there will be no “getting on with their lives”; in fact, we are putting their lives at risk. I fear that this is playing Covid roulette with our children and young people.