Hopes for schools to open before Easter – with 2 weeks’ notice

EDUCATION Secretary Gavin Williamson has said he hopes schools in England can fully reopen to pupils before Easter.

Mr Williamson said that he wanted to get pupils back in the classroom at the “earliest possible opportunity”. “I would certainly hope that that would be certainly before Easter,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

Primary and secondary schools were ordered to close their doors to all but vulnerable children and the children of key workers when England went into a third national lockdown at the beginning of January.

Boris Johnson warned that most pupils would have to continue with remote learning until after the mid-February half-term break.

Mr Williamson said that a key criteria in determining when schools could reopen would be whether the pressures on the NHS had eased sufficiently.

He said the Government aimed to give schools a “clear two-week notice period” so that they were able to prepare properly to welcome pupils back.

The Education Secretary also said he hoped that a programme of daily coronavirus tests in secondary schools and colleges as an alternative to self-isolation would be able to resume.