Schools are overreacting to positive tests, warns children’s advocate
OVERCAUTIOUS teachers are sending entire year groups of pupils home unnecessarily, the Children’s Commissioner has warned, adding that education must not be sacrificed because of the pandemic.
Just one pupil testing positive can send an entire school into “chaos” with a whole year group sent home for a fortnight, Anne Longfield said.
She is writing to MPS today to highlight the huge discrepancies in the interpretation of guidance on how to handle cases of Covid-19 at school, and the detrimental effect this is having on children’s education.
“On any given day, around a tenth of kids are at home, some in isolation. This rises to a fifth in some areas,” Ms Longfield told The Daily Telegraph.
“There has been chaos in some schools, with some sending entire year groups home for a fortnight because a single pupil tests positive for Covid, something that is actually against government guidance and should stop.”
Her intervention comes after official figures revealed that nearly half of secondary schools in England told children to stay at home due to Covid last week.
The data, published by the Department for Education ( DFE) this week, showed that 46 per cent of secondaries and 16 per cent of primaries sent pupils home for Covid-related reasons.
Ms Longfield will warn MPS that in some cases, schools are being overcautious and sending home an entire year group when, in fact, only a smaller group of pupils had close contact with a peer who tested positive.
She said that schools should stay open “no matter what”, adding: “Children’s education shouldn’t be sacrificed on the altar of Covid.”
Ms Longfield said it was problematic to be sending pupils home unnecessarily because the quality of remote education is patchy at best. “The educational inequality this is contributing to is shocking,” she said.
A legal duty on schools to provide good quality remote education for selfisolating pupils comes into force today.
A DFE spokesman said: “Over 99 per cent of schools have been open every week since term began, with over 7.3 million pupils attending last week.”