Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how data on (a) covid-19 infection rates and (b) staff absence for covid-19 related reasons among staff in education settings is collected by his Department.

The Department receives COVID-19 infection data directly from the National COVID-19 Response Centre within the Department for Health and Social Care on a daily basis. In addition to this, the Department continually monitors a number of public sources of COVID-19 analysis, including, but not limited to, the Office for National Statistics COVID-19 Infection Survey, the Office for National Statistics Schools Infection Survey, the Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission study at Imperial College London, and the weekly national Influenza and COVID-19 Surveillance Reports published by Public Health England.

The Department also maintains a strong working relationship with SAGE, SPI-M, SPI-B and the Children’s Task and Finish Group on children, schools and transmission, which assist in informing the Department’s understanding of the spread of COVID-19 within the community and within key groups of interest.

Ofsted collects and publishesinformation from early years providers on confirmed cases of COVID-19 known to them among staff and children. The latest data was published on Monday 11 January and provides the number of notifications for weeks commencing 14 and 21 December.

The Office for Students collects, on behalf of the Department, information from higher education providers on confirmed cases of COVID-19 known to them among staff and students, as well as headcounts for each. From this information we estimate infection rates in the Higher Education sector.

The Department also asks the majority of schools and colleges to complete the daily education settings online form, wherein they are asked to provide the number of teachers including head teachers, teaching assistants and other staff attending the school onsite as well as the number of those absent due to COVID-19 reasons from onsite and remote teaching/working: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/how-to-complete-the-educational-setting-status-form.

Please note, the online form is not the primary source of data on infection, incidence and COVID-19 cases overall. Rather, this data is used so we can understand capacity issues at both regional and national level.

Further data on overall infection rates, incidence rates and number of COVID-19 cases is owned elsewhere in Government such as by Public Health England, and can be found within the following links:

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/?_ga=2.91108568.335840232.1603021384-1347302696.1578321854.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-reports.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/16october2020.