Private schools ready to open in September

Leading fee-paying institutions set to work around official advice and welcome back students

PRIVATE schools are preparing to circumvent Government guidance and open in September “come what may”, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

Some of the most prestigious feepaying institutions are setting up their own track and trace systems, which they aim to have up and running in time for the new academic year.

It comes as the Government formally admitted in a High Court document, in response to a legal challenge to its lockdown policies, that it was a “request, not a direction” for schools to close. Several private schools are preparing to write to parents in the coming weeks to inform them that they will reopen after the summer break.

A governor at one of the country’s leading private schools said headteachers are “furious” with ministers over their dithering, adding schools “could have legally and safely opened this term”. He said: “We have had enough. We will definitely open In September using our own hygiene measures, our own risk-based assessment of social distancing and our own test and trace system. There is no confidence left in the Government, given their failed promises.”

Downing Street has come under fire for its policy on schools reopening, having rowed back on plans to allow all primary school pupils back to the classroom before summer, then saying it would encourage this after all.

Earlier this week, new official guidance said every secondary school pupil in England will be allowed to return to school before the summer, but only for one day. Previously, the guidance said that only Year 10 and Year 12 pupils were allowed back before the summer.

Barnaby Lenon, chair of the Independent Schools Council, urged ministers to give headteachers the freedom to open as they see fit from September.

“I quite understand trying to impose Government rules on an entire nation is inevitable in the early days of the withdrawal from lockdown,” he said.

“But from September, they should be relying on the good judgment of heads.”

Mr Lenon, a former headmaster at Harrow School, said there is now a “significant demand” among private schools to be given a greater degree of flexibility on how they go about reopening.

The Government’s legal defence of its lockdown policies, submitted to the

High Court in response to a judicial review launched by the businessman Simon Dolan, states schools were never required to close.

“This constituted a request, not a direction,” the document says. “The Secretary of State has not exercised his powers to make a closure direction in respect of any school.”

Private schools intend to use this document to convince their insurers that it is safe for them to reopen from September.

“This gives us the legal basis to confirm that we definitely will be reopening in September, come what may,” the private school governor said.

“The moment that lots of parents realise that independent schools will be taking this stance, they will look to their own schools to adopt a similar stance and this will ramp up pressure on the Government.”

He added that the independent sector faces an “existential threat” and that it is “business critical” for it to reopen in September.

Last night, the Prime Minister insisted it was safe for pupils to return to school.

Boris Johnson told the Downing Street press conference: “I want to say to all parents whose children are eligible to return in primary school – and there’s loads of them – I want to show you it is safe, and there is no need for your kids to miss out on their education.

“I hope they will go to school.”