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22 April 2026

Tag: COVID-19

Vaccines to be offered to 16 and 17-year-olds ‘within weeks’

School leaders have welcomed the government’s plan to make vaccines available to 16- and 17-year-olds across England within “a short number of weeks”. The rollout has now been approved for over-16s by the government’s joint committee on vaccination and immunisation (JCVI), but it stopped short of recommending jabs for younger children. Professor Wei Shen Lim, […]

DfE U-turns on masks for pupils travelling to school

The DfE has made a rapid U-turn over plans to relax face covering guidance for pupils on public transport and school buses. Guidance for schools about step four of the relaxation of Covid restrictions was revised on Tuesday, just eight days after it was published and before the changes even take effect next week. The […]

More than 1 in 10 pupils absent as isolation rises again

More than one in ten pupils were absent from school last week because of Covid, after the number of pupils self-isolating rose again. According to the Department for Education’s attendance survey data, around 839,100 children, or 11.2 per cent of the total pupil population, were absent from state schools for Covid-related reasons on July 8. […]

Exam changes can’t compensate for Covid hit to disadvantaged pupils, says government

Changes to next year’s exams cannot compensate for pupils’ divided experiences during the pandemic, the government has said, even as research from its own exams regulator laid bare the disruption to disadvantaged children’s education. On Monday, Ofqual and the Department for Education published a consultation on measures to “help mitigate the impact of disruption” for […]

Pupils three times more likely to be self-isolating in north-east than London

Secondary pupils in parts of northern England are more than three times as likely to miss classes while they self-isolate as their peers in London, according to new figures. The average pupil between year 7 and year 10 in a sample of north-east schools missed more than a third of their time in school last […]

Long-read: The evidence behind the government’s Covid classroom ‘gamble’

A raft of Covid protective measures look set to be removed in schools on “freedom day” later this month. Schools Week takes a look at the evidence behind the government’s “gamble”. From July 19, when the country will likely move to Step 4 of the roadmap out of lockdown, keeping pupils in bubbles and rules […]

Bubbles and masks go at step 4, but isolation rules in place to end of term

Schools will no longer be told to keep pupils in consistent “bubbles” from step four of the government’s roadmap out of lockdown, but isolation rules for close contacts will remain in place until the end of term. Updated guidance issued by the Department for Education states that at step four, “we will no longer recommend […]

More than 600,000 pupils off school due to Covid

More than 600,000 pupils were absent last week because of Covid, with around one in ten secondary pupils missing school. New Department for Education attendance survey data estimates 640,100 pupils, or 8.5 per cent of the total pupil population, were off school for Covid-related reasons last Thursday. This a 66 per cent rise from around […]