Swinney reveals more school staff have been recruited to ‘build resilience’ during pandemic
More than 1,400 teachers and support staff have been recruited across Scotland to help school scope with the challenges of corona virus, with hundreds more expected in the coming weeks.
The Scottish Government announced the recruitment – at a cost of £80 million – as it emerged almost 4,000 pupils in the Lanarkshire area alone have had to self-isolate in the last month.
The region has been one of the worst affected by the virus in Scotland, with reports 1,999 pupils in the South Lanarkshire Council area have had to isolate at home, while 375 tested positive for the disease. In North Lanarkshire, a reported 2,000 pupils had to self-isolate and 200 tested positive.
Education Secretary John Swinney said schools are facing a “challenging situation”, but he insisted it is safe for youngsters to be in class.
He also said that while attendance levels are lower than last year, only a“very small proportion of positive cases” of Covid-19 have been linked to education.
Mr Swinney said in a radio inter view: “There is a cha l - len ging situation in our schools. But our teaching staff have done an incredible job in making sure that full-time education has been available for young people in Scotland since 11 August .
“We’ re generally seeing attendance by pupils at just about 90 percent, now the average in Scotland last year was 93 per cent over the whole of the year. In terms of staff attendance, generally we are seeing staff attendance at a very high level, of the order of perhaps 2 per cent to 3 per cent staff absences.”
He said contact tracing data indicates 4-5 per cent of coronavirus cases “have got some connection with education”, but stressed: “We tend to find those are cases where it has been an external community transmission has happened, there is very little evidence of in-school transmission … our schools are very safe.”
He was speaking as the Scottish Government said councils across Scotland have recruited 1,250 teachers, with a further 200 expected to join them. Some 155 support workers have been taken on, with another 100 to follow.
Mr Swinney said: “This will bring much needed resilience to the education system.”