CAUTIOUS APPROACH BY PARENTS AND TEACHERS
POSITIVE TESTS ON ‘ABOUT 10’ STAFF AND TWO YOUNGSTERS
CONFIRMED coronavirus cases have meant five Leicester schools have shut this week.
Education bosses at Leicester City Council confirmed Moat Community College, in Highfields, Herrick Primary in Rushey Mead and Whitehall Primary in Rowlatts Hill are closed while deep cleaning takes place after staff members tested positive for the virus.
These closures are in addition to those of Humberstone Infant and Humberstone Junior.
Martin Samuels, the council’s strategic director of education and social care, said there had been no more than 10 confirmed cases of Covid-19 across all the closed schools and that their governors and heads had taken the decision to close them because they were being cautious.
He said “Almost every school is now open.
“Of the 112 schools in the city, 103 are open for extended opening, for reception, year one, year six, year 10 and year 12.
“Four are only open for vulnerable children and five are completely shut at the moment because they have had individual positive cases.
“The number of positive cases in schools remains very very low.
“In total we are about at the fingers of two hands for cases.
“It’s no more than 10 staff and there have been a couple of pupils who have tested positive across all of the schools.
“There is no evidence we have seen of transmission within schools and no suggestion that by being at school people are picking it up. We are spotting it in schools and dealing with it.
“The schools are taking advice from Ivan Browne, (the council’s director of public health) and his team and we are being quite cautious.
“The schools that are shut have actually gone further than the advice given to them.
“They didn’t need to close the whole school. There has been one case where a school could have just sent that bubble home but they took the view they wanted to be on the safe side and would send everyone home and do a deep clean of the school.
“Another school where several staff tested positive got the whole school to self-isolate for 14 days
“That’s beyond the public health advice.
“We are being careful and cautious and it really is safe to send your child to school.”
Moat Community College closed on Monday for the week.
Herrick Primary is part-way through a 14-day closure after one member of staff tested positive.
Whitehall Primary has indicated it hopes to reopen tomorrow.
Schools started offering to reopen to the children of non-key workers earlier this month.
It is optional whether parents and carers of children in eligible year groups send them back.
Mr Samuels said it was hard to get full data from schools about attendance but he said between a third and a half of children who could go back were.
He said: “The numbers were creeping up as parents became more confident but we are generally in the position where there are more places available than there are children to take them up.” He said the numbers had fallen in recent days.
He said: “We appear to have seen a drop off in the number of children attending since the Secretary of State Matt Hancock made his announcement last week (that there had been a Covid-19 outbreak in Leicester).
“It looks as though parents have been concerned about what’s been said and chosen to keep more children off school than was the case before.”
There is no evidence we have seen of transmission within schools
Martin Samuels