GET OUT OF FRANCE NOW ... OR YOU’LL MISS SCHOOL
Warning for parents facing Channel dash
FAMILIES were scrambling to flee France last night amid fears new quarantine rules will cause thousands of children to miss the start of the school year. Pupils who do not return to the UK by Tuesday night will still be self-isolating at home when the majority of schools go back on September 2.
But with limited capacity on flights, ferries and the Eurotunnel, many will have no choice but to stay in France – or pay high prices for some of the remaining tickets.
France is expected to impose titfor-tat restrictions from Monday, meaning British travellers will have to self-isolate on arrival there too. The race to get home came as: n
■ Some tourists had less time to avoid quarantine after the Scottish and Welsh governments demanded the rules be introduced a day earlier;
■ Students faced being forced to take a gap year after Oxford,
Cambridge and other top universities said they may not have room for them even if they successfully challenge their A-level grades;
■ Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane said Britain’s economy is on course for a rapid recovery;
■ Britain struck a deal to buy 90million doses of another two promising vaccines;
■ UK cases reached their highest daily level for two months, with a further 1,441 positive tests reported yesterday.
Families returning to the UK from France or another blacklisted country after 4am today risk a £1,000 fine and a criminal record if they send their children to school when they are meant to be in a 14-day self-isolation.
Parents will not be fined by head teachers or have their children marked as officially absent if they are observing the quarantine.
But Home Office rules say returning travellers should not go to work or school – and officials have vowed rigorous enforcement.
It means teachers will be banned from going back to the classroom if they are still self-isolating when term begins.
The National Education Union recently demanded that teachers who are in quarantine should receive full holiday pay if they cannot work from home. Schools have been asked to make sure remote learning facilities are in place to help pupils who have to selfisolate in the first week of term.
It comes after Boris Johnson vowed to make the reopening of schools a ‘ national priority’ following months of disruption.
Yesterday former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith criticised the Government’s handling of the French quarantine fiasco. He said: ‘I would have preferred it if this had been done in a more nuanced way.
‘Rather than slapping the quarantine across the whole country, it would have been better to do it in a phased way, with the most badly hit regions first. I am concerned many teachers will be affected by this decision at a time when they are needed back in schools.’
Covid-19 cases in France rose by 2,846 yesterday, taking the sevenday average above 2,000 for the first time since April 20.
But critics have questioned the need for a blanket quarantine when there are huge differences in infection rates between regions.
The area including Paris has been hard hit, with more than 73,000 cases, but this is five times that of the region covering Provence and the Cote d’Azur.
Britain has also added restrictions to travellers from Monaco, Malta, Holland, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Aruba.
The Government now advises against all but essential travel to France and the other countries. It means travellers there are unlikely to be covered by travel insurance.
The move has ruined the holiday plans of an estimated 500,000 Britons in France, and travel bosses have warned of days of chaos.
Eurotunnel tickets for crossings this weekend and into next week were selling out fast last night, along with Eurostar trains out of Paris. Flights with British Airways, Ryanair and EasyJet sold out within minutes of the announcement on Thursday night.
The cost of tickets for the few remaining seats on flights from Nice and Paris jumped ten-fold to £800 yesterday morning. Tickets for the Channel Tunnel sold out in hours as 12,000 people tried to move their bookings forward.
Eurostar and Brittany Ferries said most services were fully booked. Tickets on Eurostar were up by 30 per cent, meaning it would cost a family of four more than £800 to travel from Paris to London yesterday afternoon.
There are mounting fears Iceland, Austria and Poland could be added to the quarantine list next week, although insiders h ave hinted Portugal could be taken off the list.
Travel bosses say the latest decision has destroyed the summer holiday season. The Office for National Statistics says 20 per cent of adults have abandoned plans for trips abroad. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said an estimated 160,000 tried to return from France yesterday.