Parents could be roped in to test pupils for Covid
PARENTS, governors and retired teachers could administer Covid tests in schools despite a massive revolt over ministers’ 11th-hour plans.
volunteers may be used instead of teachers to carry out rapid testing at secondary schools in the New Year, schools minister Nick Gibb said yesterday.
But major education unions threatened to scupper the programme. They announced that schools will have their backing if they refuse to cooperate with the ‘ inoperable’ testing plans.
The Government has announced that around 5.5million secondary pupils in England will be homeschooled for a week in January and only called on site for Covid-19 tests.
Only teenagers facing GCSE and Alevels in the summer, as well as the children of key workers and those in vulnerable situations, will have faceto-face learning from January 4.
The Government’s testing programme was revealed on Thursday
‘Simply not realistic’
afternoon, when thousands of schools were breaking up due to taking ‘inset’ days yesterday.
Details on how schools are expected to deliver testing will not be revealed until next week – during the Christmas holidays.
However, an NHS Test and Trace handbook published on Tuesday under separate plans for tests for staff suggested that schools may ‘ want to draw on volunteers’ such as ‘ parents, retired teachers, Red Cross, St John’s Ambulance and community organisations’. The handbook suggests that testing 100 people in three ‘ bays’ in a school would take three hours and involve nine members of staff. This is based on 11 to 13 tests an hour.
However, the Schools Week newspaper calculated that if all 3,456 of England’s state secondary schools tested 100 pupils on the same day, they would need 31,000 staff.
Mr Gibb defended the plans, telling Radio 4’s Today programme the Government had to ‘take action at pace’ due to the ‘fast-moving pandemic’.
He insisted that volunteers – such as parents and governors – will not need DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) checks because they will be ‘supervised’ by staff.
But the NASUWT union said it was ‘outrageous’ vetting would not be required. Kevin Courtney, of the National Education Union, said schools ‘will not be able to supervise all the volunteers that will be needed’.
In a scathing joint statement, the unions warned that testing in secondary schools will not be ready for the start of January – and they should not be forced to roll it out.
The statement, signed by the Association of School and College Leaders, NASUWT, NEU, the National Association of Head Teachers, the National Governance Association, the Sixth Form Colleges Association and the Church of England education office, said: ‘The suggestion that schools can safely recruit, train and organise a team of suitable volunteers to staff and run testing stations on their premises by the start of the new term is simply not realistic.’
Meanwhile, Robert Halfon, Tory chairman of the Commons education committee, said the delayed term dates would place ‘enormous pressure’ on working parents.
He warned it would lead to ‘more lost learning’.