Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will publish the latest rate of infection with covid-19 of (a) teachers, (b) teaching assistants, (c) non teaching school staff, (d) staff in registered childcare settings, (e) college staff and (f) university staff.

The Department does not hold data on infection rates amongst (a) teachers, (b) teaching assistants, (c) non teaching school staff, (d) staff in registered childcare settings, and (e) college staff.

For (f) university staff, the department has asked higher education (HE) providers to share information on their staff numbers and the number of staff COVID-19 cases that have been reported to them. For the 183 HE providers which provided this information to us for the 7 days between 10 and 16 December, our estimate is that there were 56.7 confirmed cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 non-academic and academic staff in HE providers for that period.

Estimates for more recent weeks are not available due to: i) a pause in data collection over the winter break and ii) inconsistencies arising from the effect of the national lockdown that began this month.

Advice from the Children's Task and Finish group is that children are at very low risk of serious illness from the virus, and there is also no current evidence that staff in schools and colleges are at higher risk of infection than those working in other sectors. This advice can be accessed here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/948617/s0998-tfc-update-to-4-november-2020-paper-on-children-schools-transmission.pdf.

The safety and wellbeing of staff, pupils and students in education settings is always our priority. The Government is doing all it can to minimise the risks to those working and studying in our nurseries, schools, colleges, and universities in this unprecedented situation, while mitigating the impact on education.

On 7 January, the Department published guidance to universities and students returning to higher education in the spring term. This guidance sets out how we will support higher education providers to enable students to return as safely as possible following the winter break, by staggering this process following the period of national lockdown and to facilitate testing for all. The guidance is available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/950367/Students_returning_to_and_starting_higher_education_in_Spring_Term_2021.pdf.

The Department also published ‘guidance: Actions for schools during the coronavirus outbreak’, which sets out what all schools will need to do during the COVID-19 outbreak from January 2021. The guidance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/actions-for-schools-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak.

On 7 January, the Department published guidance for all early years settings and local authorities in England, which provides information on how the national lockdown restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19 will impact early years and childcare settings. This guidance is available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/950653/Education_and_childcare_settings_-_national_lockdown_from_5_January_2021_.pdf.

On 8 January, the Department published guidance on actions for further education colleges and providers during the COVID-19 outbreak: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-maintaining-further-education-provision.

The Department will continue to keep our plans under review and ensure our position is informed by the latest evidence.