School ‘circuit breakers’ seen as precursor to full closures
As rising virus cases force short shutdowns, parents’ group warns over return to remote education
PARENTS fear their children may be forced to return to remote education in the run-up to the Christmas holidays as schools begin to impose their own “circuit breakers”.
Official guidance from the Department for Education says that schools should only send large groups of children home in “extreme cases” and as a “last resort”.
The Daily Telegraph has learnt that some schools have already started to close, citing a rise in cases. St Mary’s Church of England Primary School in Credenhill, Hereford has told parents it will have a seven-day “full school ‘circuit breaker’ closure”, which began yesterday and will end on Nov 29.
Bernadette Davies, the school’s executive head teacher, wrote to families to explain that the decision has been taken “in conjunction with our local authority” and follows a “significant increase” in Covid cases in the school.
She said that “despite our best efforts to reduce the risk of transmission within school”, the one-week closure was the “next course of action”.
Ms Davies said the school had implemented a deep-cleaning regime, increased sanitising, brought in PPE, separated year groups and staggered playtimes and lunches.
“The purpose of this break is to act as a ‘circuit breaker’ and cease the transmission of Covid throughout the school,” she said.
The school will be closed to all pupils and they will be taught remotely instead. In previous lockdowns, the most vulnerable and children of key workers have been allowed to continue attending school. Arabella Skinner, of the parent campaign group Usforthem, said remote learning was a “failed experiment” and “not one that we should be repeating in the context of a nearly fully vaccinated adult population”.
She added: “As the experience of last year shows, these isolated cases of school closures don’t stay isolated for long. The worry is that in the run-up to Christmas, we will see more examples of this. For how much longer are we going to ask our children to stay second-class citizens?”
Darwen Aldridge Enterprise Studio, in Darwen, Lancs, has also announced it will close its doors until Dec 2.
The school, which caters for pupils aged 13 to 19, said it was a “difficult decision” to move to online learning. In a letter to parents, Colin Grand, its head teacher, said: “In light of the number of cases and the advice given, we have made the difficult decision to close the school and move to remote lessons.”
Guidance from the DFE states that in “extreme cases, and as a last resort where all other risk mitigations have not broken chains of in-school transmission”, a director of public health “may advise introducing short-term attendance restrictions”. It says this could include “sending home a class or year group”.
Former ministers have called for a school triple-lock to be introduced to prevent the Government shutting down classrooms. A new Bill championed by Robert Halfon, the Tory chairman of the education select committee, says that any decision to close schools must pass three tests in the future.
The number of children who received home education increased by more than a third last year, figures suggest. The Association of Directors of Children’s Services estimated 115,542 children and young people were being home educated at some point during the 2020-21 academic year, up 34 per cent from the previous year. Covid concern was the most common reason cited for schooling children at home.