‘June opening as safe as August’

IT IS just as safe reopening schools this term as in August, the First Minister insisted, even though the chief medical officer said June was the “second best option”.

Mark Drakeford was asked about the row over when it was safe to reopen schools and denied that ministers had been dictated to by the unions.

Mr Drakeford said the nation’s chief medical officer Dr Frank Atherton signed off and endorsed the June 29 re-opening date announced by the Education Minister.

”This is not a choice between doing a safe thing and doing an unsafe thing. It was a choice about how we re-open our schools and doing it with safety first all along,” said Mr Drakeford.

Recriminations flew after Dr Atherton said that reopening schools in June was the “second-best option”.

Mr Atherton said: “When I was discussing this with the education minister my preferred option would have been to reopen the schools perhaps towards the end of the summer in August to give us a little bit more time. I understand that was not attractive to the unions.”

That prompted an angry response from the largest teaching union, the National Education Union Cymru, with its Wales National Secretary David Evans saying the unions’ preferred option was to wait until September and they would not take the blame for the controvesial announcement to reopen to all school years as soon on June 29.

Mr Drakeford asaid: “This is not a choice between doing a safe thing and doing an unsafe thing.

“It was a choice about how we re-open our schools and doing it with safety first all along. There is no safety difference between going back in July (sic) and going back in August.

“It is Welsh government ministers who make decisions here, but we do so in that social partnership context that has stood us in such good stead.”