Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the tiered levels of covid-19 restrictions for (a) education and (b) childcare.

The Government has made it a national priority that schools and nurseries should continue to operate as normally as possible during the COVID-19 outbreak. This remains the default position for all areas in all local restriction tiers.

On 27 November the Department published a simple and clear contingency framework for the rare circumstances in which schools and/or colleges might need to revise their delivery models for a short period of time to help contain COVID-19 transmission within a community.

Such measures will be implemented in the fewest number of schools required, for the shortest time. Given the considerable benefits to children of continued face to face teaching, the threshold for moving to any restrictions will remain exceptionally high.

Any decision to initiate local restrictions to any schools or nurseries will not be taken lightly and will be made by central government on a case by case basis in the light of local and national circumstances.

The education contingency framework can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-contingency-framework-for-education-and-childcare-settings.