‘We cannot stop schooling forever’
advising that schools must plan to re-open.
She said ultimately schools would make their own decisions on how to start re-opening and added: “Every school is unique and every school will make its own plans, working alongside the council.
“The focus is on putting these arrangements in place.”
Council Leader Clr Shabir Pandor said re-opening schools will be done “in a sensible and measured way” though he doubted the suggested June 1 date was achievable.
“The Government’s announcement means that, with the support of the council, they must plan to reopen to certain pupils in a way that keeps children, families and staff as safe as possible.”
Clr Smith said: “As I see it the main issue parents are worried about is, is it safe for kids to return?
“There can never be cast iron guarantees about anything but if you look at why schools were closed, it was never because of a fear for the health of children due to coronavirus. It was to prevent the spread of the disease.
“The risk to children is very small. There are, at the time of writing, two deaths of young people under 15 due to the virus and whilst this is indeed a tragedy, it cannot justify permanently harming the life chances of all children.
“The fact is that this disease is dangerous to elderly people and those with underlying health conditions. At the time schools were closed, the rate of re-infection, the so-called R number, was about three, meaning that the disease doubled every three to four days.
“Now this number is below one. Also the prevalence or number of people thought to have the disease at the time the schools closed was thought to be between 4-10% of the total population.
“It is now understood to be below 0.3% meaning that there is much less of it around and therefore much less chance of it being spread.”
He said if education bosses in Kirklees decided not to allow children back into their schools they should look urgently at what he described as the “totally different” school responses to the pandemic.
He said there was “a massive disparity” between schools that were interacting daily with pupils and others that were doing very little. And he argued that no matter how hard parents tried to assist with schoolwork they cannot replace teaching staff.