Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department has published guidance for schools on a national school outbreak plan in the event of a covid-19 case.

The Government has been clear that all pupils, in all year groups, should return to school full-time from the beginning of the autumn term and on 2 July we published guidance to help schools prepare for this, including advice on the responding to any infections. This includes how schools should manage confirmed cases of COVID-19 amongst the school community, and contain any outbreak. The guidance is available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/actions-for-schools-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak/guidance-for-full-opening-schools

The 2 July guidance set out that every school should plan for the possibility of local restrictions and how they will ensure continuity of education in exceptional circumstances where there is some level of restriction applied to education or childcare in a local area.

The Department of Health and Social Care has published an overview of the tiers of restriction for education and childcare, to be implemented only where absolutely necessary, in its contain framework. This can be viewed here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/containing-and-managing-local-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreaks/covid-19-contain-framework-a-guide-for-local-decision-makers

We have published guidance on how schools can plan for tier 2 local restrictions due to the operational challenges that schools could experience. This can be viewed here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/how-schools-can-plan-for-tier-2-local-restrictions/how-schools-can-plan-for-tier-2-local-restrictions