Johnson warns return to classroom will spark rise in infections

Boris Johnson has welcomed the “emotional” return to school for pupils in England as he warned it would lead to a rise in coronavirus transmission and ruled out accelerating the planned lifting of the third national lockdown.

The UK prime minister told a Downing Street press conference it was “inevitable” that case numbers would increase as schools reopened in the first step on the government’s road map to easing restrictions in England.

Johnson said the risk of a rise in infections was worth it. “We all know that the education of our children is so important that the greater risk now is keeping them out of school for a day longer.”

But he said that scientists would study the data on the effect of the return to classrooms on virus transmission rates before deciding whether to move to a further limited lifting of the lockdown on March 29 at the earliest.

A bigger reopening of the economy is scheduled for April 12 and although Johnson acknowledged the vaccination drive was working well he warned that in some European countries “the curve is going up again”.

Jenny Harries, deputy chief medical officer for England, said the case rate was down at the same level as in late September, but she warned it was still high enough for a new wave to “easily take off again”.

In a sign that pressure on the NHS was easing, the health service said most of the pop-up Nightingale hospitals — established in the early weeks of the pandemic but little used — are to close to patients from April. The London and Sunderland Nightingales will continue to be used as Covid-19 vaccination centres, while the Exeter and Harrogate facilities will be used to carry out diagnostic tests.

The return to classrooms left teachers juggling the rollout of a new mass testing programme for secondary schools with helping children catch up. A year of disrupted learning has left pupils, on average, two months behind, according to the Education Endowment Foundation.

The majority of children have not had normal lessons since before the Christmas holidays, after rapidly rising rates of coronavirus forced the government to abruptly shut schools on the first day of the January term.

While most primary school children returned on Monday, the full return of older pupils will be phased over a week or more as secondary schools roll out a programme of mass coronavirus checks for all students.

As part of the return, older pupils will take three rapid-result, lateral flow device tests on school premises before switching to taking the tests at home twice a week.

But take-up is not universal: a survey by the Association of School and College Leaders found on Monday that only 54 per cent of surveyed schools were reporting on-site tests covering between 90 and 100 per cent of students.

Steve Chalke, the founder of Oasis Academies, which has more than 50 schools, said some parents were reluctant to consent because they were on insecure employment contracts and would be left without pay if their child tested positive, so forcing them to isolate.

Dr Michael Weekes, an infectious diseases expert at Addenbrooke’s hospital and the University of Cambridge, warned that the reopening of schools “may lead to a significant increase in cases especially if people don’t take the opportunity to be tested”.

But he said it was right that schools were taking the plunge first as children had already missed out on too much education. It was up to government scientists to “keep a very tight eye on the data” to monitor the impact.

School leaders on Monday said they were concerned with the logistics of returning to lessons and the challenge of covering missed education and deciding teacher-assessed grades for A-level and GCSE assessments.

Ofqual, the exams regulator, is finalising detailed guidance for schools on how to calculate grades. But with just over three months before they have to be submitted, headteachers are worried there is not enough time left to establish a uniform approach.

Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, which represents teachers, said her members had been left in an “invidious position” over GCSE and A-levels and feared grades could be disputed for being perceived as too low or too high. “You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” she said.

To support catch-up efforts, the government has committed £1.7bn in funding. But the government’s education recovery tsar Sir Kevan Collins has warned that attempting to make up for lost learning was a “long game” that would require years of work and significant further funding.

Over the weekend, education secretary Gavin Williamson said schools could be ordered to introduce a five-term year or longer school days to make up for time lost during the pandemic as part of a “transformative” reform to the system in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis.

School leaders welcomed the ambition of Collins’ proposals but branded Williamson’s promise of a five-term year a sideshow to the long-term financial commitments needed for catch up.

“It’s distraction tactics — a grand future of education on the cheap,” Alan Brookes, chair of the Kent Association of Headteachers, said. “What we need is a three-year plan.”

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Headteachers, said speculation about longer school days, shortened holidays and “extra maths and English instead of PE” was “immensely frustrating for school leaders”.

Additional reporting by Sarah Neville