coronavirus | Schools Week

Bring back face coverings in secondary schools and vaccinate pupils on site, say unions

Face coverings should be reintroduced in secondary school classrooms and for students in communal areas, unions representing teachers and support staff have said, amid growing fears about the impact of the Delta variant of Covid-19. The National Education Union, along with support staff unions Unison, the GMB and Unite, have also said pupils should be […]

Covid-19: Almost 1 in 3 Bolton secondary pupils absent as Delta variant surges

Attendance data has revealed the scale of Covid-19 disruption to schools in some parts of England, with almost one in three secondary pupils in Bolton absent because of the virus in the last week of term. Data from attendance surveys published by the Department for Education shows 31.5 per cent of secondary pupils and 21.3 […]

School Covid outbreaks near six-month high as Indian variant spreads

Covid outbreaks in schools have reached their highest level since December as the Indian variant continues to spread, official figures show. School leaders called new data on the spread of the Delta variant first discovered in India “concerning”, and said it raised “serious questions” over the decision to drop face covering requirements in schools last […]

Sir Kevan Collins resigns as government education recovery tsar

The government’s education recovery commissioner Sir Kevan Collins has offered his resignation after ministers allocated just £1.4 billion in funding for the next phase of their catch-up plan, it has been reported. In his resignation letter to prime minister Boris Johnson, published by Tes, Collins warned he did not believe it was “credible that a […]

Free school meals voucher extension risked legal challenges

The government’s last-minute U-turn on providing free school meals vouchers over the summer holidays risked exposing it to legal challenges that would have a “medium to high” chance of success, internal documents reveal. However, Department for Education officials said that as the £191 million contract extension for Edenred – awarded without a tender – was […]

Unions demand ‘immediate’ release of Covid-19 variant school outbreaks data

Unions representing heads, teachers and support staff have demanded the “immediate” release of data on the number of Covid-19 variant cases linked to schools and colleges. A joint letter from the NAHT, ASCL, NEU, NASUWT, Unison, Unite and the GMB also calls on education secretary Gavin Williamson to come clean over when ministers were first […]

Pupils missed 33 million days of in-person education due to Covid last autumn

Pupils missed 33 million days of in-person education because of Covid during the autumn term last year, as schools grappled with the second wave of the pandemic after re-opening. Official figures show the majority – 60 per cent – of pupils saw their schooling affected by the need to self-isolate or shield, often in classes […]

DfE to finally publish ‘summary’ of school condition data

The government will finally publish a summary report on the condition of England’s schools, a senior civil servant has confirmed, following repeated calls to make reports from a recent survey public. Officials have also said they hope to inform schools due to be rebuilt over the next 10 years where they sit in the queue, […]

DfE needs ‘proper lessons-learned’ Covid review, and 4 more demands from MPs

The Department for Education seems “surprisingly resistant” to the idea of conducting a “proper lessons-learned exercise” on its early response to the Covid-19 pandemic, a group of MPs has warned. The public accounts committee has published a report on support for children’s education during the Covid-19 pandemic. In it, MPs said the DfE had “no […]