Educational Settings: Reopening

Carol Monaghan Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

My right hon. Friend is right to pay tribute to teaching staff in our schools. He is also right to point to the very difficult circumstances that both students and parents face when they are having to learn from home and are not with their friends. We all know that being in school is the best thing for young people rather than learning from home. All the decisions that we are taking are with the wellbeing of students at the forefront. We understand the disruption that the pandemic is causing to students’ education and the impact that it may have had on their mental health. We remain committed to introducing the new mental health support teams for schools and colleges. To support the return to school, we have put in place a range of measures and guidance, and a new £8 million training initiative for school staff to support children’s wellbeing. The health elements of the new RSHE—relationships, sex and health education—curriculum include teaching about mental health and wellbeing. The NHS continues to run 24-hour helplines for those people who have mental health problems.

My right hon. Friend asked about regional differences in infection rates. We will always be led by the science when making decisions about moving away from the lockdown conditions.

Finally, my right hon. Friend asked about vaccines. The JCVI advises that the first priority for the covid vaccination programme should be the prevention of mortality. For the next phase of the roll-out the JCVI has asked the Department of Health and Social Care to consider occupational vaccination, in collaboration with other Departments, including the Department for Education.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP) [V]]

We are all acutely aware of the impact of school closures on our children, none more so than those of us who have children and are trying to juggle work and home schooling. Will the Minister assure the House, however, that schools will reopen only when the scientific evidence indicates that it is safe to do so, not because of pressure from the Back Benches?

I hope that the Minister has a set of key targets that must be met before reopening. Can he share them with the House today? Is there a maximum R value that the Government are looking at if we are reopening? I echo the call from the Chair of the Education Committee, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), for the JCVI to look at the prioritisation of teachers for vaccination.

[Nick Gibb]

As I said to the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), we have restricted attendance not because schools are unsafe, but in order to reduce the overall number of social contacts in our community. Both PHE and the Department of Health and Social Care confirm that the system of controls we have in our schools—the extra hand-washing, the hygiene, the ventilation, the one-way systems, the masks in communal areas and so on—create an inherently safer environment for children and staff, where the risk of transmission of infection is substantially reduced. This is about reducing transmission in the community, and it is one of the measures after tier 4 that we introduced to achieve that.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) asked about the criteria for emerging from the lockdown. As I said at the beginning of this UQ, those criteria include hospitalisation rates, mortality, the rate of vaccination, and the challenge of the new variants, but I can assure the hon. Lady that we will be led by the advice of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, the Joint Biosecurity Centre, PHE, and the chief medical officer in any decisions we make regarding the reopening of schools.