Educational Settings

David Davis Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

It will not be suitable for them to meet, but there is an important aspect for the whole voluntary sector as to how it can look at playing an important role, contributing in many different ways to this national endeavour to deal with the crisis facing our whole nation. There will probably be a substantive role for many such organisations to look at playing within some school settings as, of course, those organisations will have individuals who are DBS-checked.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

One of the categories who will have most difficulty with this decision are the parents of children at special needs schools. As the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) pointed out, some of them are residential. Is any particular provision being made to support those parents?

[Gavin Williamson]

We recognise that a small number of children will be in a special school that has a residential setting. In a number of those cases, it will be important and essential for that setting to remain open, and we will be looking at those individually to see how best we support them and, critically, how we ensure that they have the right type of staffing, as they will suffer the effects of the spread of this virus, as will other educational establishments.