Schools in England could be forced to close again if stricter local lockdown measures are needed to prevent the spread of coronavirus, but teachers must prepare remote learning for pupils, Downing Street has said. Boris Johnson spoke of a “moral duty” to get children back into education after five months of absence and said the risk of picking up the virus in schools was small. On Monday parents were warned they could be fined if they decide to keep children off. In any future lockdown that requires schools to close, teachers would be mandated to keep learning ongoing at home. Asked if there would be mass closures of schools again, even on a localised basis, a Downing Street spokesman said: “We would need to look on a case-by-case basis at the local area … it would depend on the local lockdown in question and the circumstances around increasing cases. If that was the case and that needed to happen, we would expect the school to provide a remote education.” Outbreaks around schools would be dealt with by deploying mobile testing units, testing staff and potentially isolating some pupils or groups, Downing Street said. The schools minister, Nick Gibb, said financial penalties would be a “last resort” but were still available to local authorities if pupils were kept away from the classroom. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Gibb said: “Fines for non-attendance have always been a last resort for headteachers in schools. What matters is that young people are attending school. “We live in a country where education is compulsory and I think parents can be reassured that the measures that schools are taking to make sure that we minimise the risk of the transmission of the virus are very effective.” He said he had visited schools preparing for the return next week that had devised safety measures such as “bubble zones” to keep groups of children together.
Other measures might include installing more hand basins and hand sanitiser points, different entrances being opened around the school, and pupils having their own designated keyboards. No 10 said it was not changing its guidance on mask usage in schools. “Our guidance does not recommend face masks in school, we acknowledge face coverings could obstruct communication between teachers and pupils,” Johnson’s spokesman said. Scotland’s education secretary, John Swinney, is consulting with teachers and councils on the possibility of bringing in guidance on masks in secondary schools there. Gibb suggested headteachers in England should be able to reassure families that the measures they had taken meant it was safe for children to come back without the need for local authorities to issue penalty notices. “If they have got extra concerns, that’s a matter between the headteacher and the family,” he said. Fines for unauthorised absences are £60, rising to £120 if there is a delay in paying. They are often applied to people who take their children out of school in term time for holidays. Gibb suggested there would be no change to this system in light of the pandemic.
In a second interview with BBC Breakfast, he said: “Fines are available. We haven’t suspended the law on that issue from September onwards, but, knowing headteachers as I do, they use that measure absolutely as a very last resort, and in the current climate they will want to be talking to parents to allay their concerns.” The deputy chief medical officer for England, Dr Jenny Harries, said in an interview with Sky News on Monday that children were more at risk from seasonal flu than coronavirus. Child deaths from coronavirus were exceptionally rare, and when children did get an infection it was very mild and sometimes asymptomatic, she said. The shadow education secretary, Kate Green, accused the government of going “missing in action” and being “asleep at the wheel”. She told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “The guidance that’s been given to schools is one-size-fits-all. It doesn’t take account of the fact that a small school, perhaps in very constrained premises, will have to make different arrangements from a large inner-city school. “There hasn’t been information for school leaders, so that they can’t plan what they might have to do if there was a sudden spike in the local infection rate and the guidance that has come out I think has been – it’s been contradictory, it’s been confusing, it came very late, shortly before the summer holidays.” Many pupils in England have not attended classes since March, when schools were closed except to look after vulnerable children and those of key workers. Schools in Scotland reopened this month, while those in Northern Ireland were welcoming pupils again on Monday. English and Welsh schools will follow suit in September.