Commenting as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education answers emergency questions in the House of Commons today on keeping schools open in face of Covid and the new omicron variant, Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said:

“Everyone is concerned about how the impact of the new variant will play out over the next few weeks and the implications for January. No-one wants to see the sort of disruption to education that we experienced last winter.

“School leaders are telling me that this has been the hardest term of the whole pandemic. There has been a significant jump in Covid cases in schools over the last week, amongst both staff and pupils, as the new variant has started to spread.

“School leaders remember all too clearly the chaos and last-minute government decisions that took place last year and will be making contingency plans in case the situation gets worse. That is just the sensible and responsible thing to do.

“It is essential that government give schools as much notice as possible if they are planning to make any changes to the guidance for January. Whilst we recognise this is a rapidly changing situation, we cannot have a repeat of last year where schools were given less than 24 hours’ notice of important changes.

“The government needs to think very carefully about the mitigations it needs to take to keep schools open next term. Ventilation is crucial in the fight against the spread of Covid in classrooms but the government is not providing air purification devices for all schools. We simply cannot work on the basis that only those schools that can afford air purification devices are able to access them. The government owes all children a safe and comfortable environment in which to learn, with minimum disruption to education. If air purifiers can help with that, then they must be available to all.

“The government also needs to remove unnecessary burdens like inspection, pointless assessment exercises and other bureaucratic procedures that feed the Westminster machine but do little to support schools at this difficult time."