Covid-19: Education Settings

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend is a new Member, and he arrives here with a lot of optimism. I reassure him that we have a broad, balanced and knowledge-rich curriculum of which we should be proud, although we always work to make sure it gets even better.

It is with some sadness that I say the National Education Union started off by saying it did not want teachers to teach pupils in person, and then said it did not want teachers to teach students online. It starts to make me question whether the National Education Union really believes in education at all. We will wait and see, and hopefully it will be more co-operative and hard-working in the next academic year.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab) [V]]

Regular testing for pupils and staff is going to be a vital part of stopping the spread of covid-19, but the decline in testing numbers shows that home testing is currently not working well. Tackling this with on-site testing would mean some schools in my constituency having to test 600 children a day, which they tell me they simply do not have the resources to do. Will the Secretary of State give schools the resources they need, including external support if they need it, to make sure they are able to carry out testing and keep children safe?

[Gavin Williamson]

I would like to reassure the hon. Lady that we will be supporting schools as they roll out the testing. Schools have delivered asymptomatic testing on school premises incredibly successfully already in this academic year and we will look at providing the same level of support to them as we did earlier on, in March. We have every confidence that we will be able to deliver that right across the country.