The education secretary has said parents in England who do not send their children back to school risk putting a “huge dent in their future life chances”, ahead of pupils returning to classrooms this week.
Gavin Williamson also said he was not considering resigning despite criticism over the exams fiasco, telling the Sun he would instead continue to “graft away”.
In an open letter to parents, Williamson acknowledged that some may have concerns about their children attending school in England for the first time since March.
He insisted, however, that schools were safe. He detailed the measures put in place to minimise infectionand told parents the health risk Covid-19 posed to children was “extremely low”.
“If a child is not in school, they stand to lose far more than just a few months of learning. It could well put a huge dent in their future life chances,” he said.
“Education is a birthright, so let’s make sure we get all children back, back to learning, back to playing and back to being kids again.”
He also told the Sun: “For every day they are out of school, we don’t get that day back. I’ve seen it with my kids, how much they’ve missed school, missed their friends, missed learning.”
His comments came after teaching unions condemned the government for releasing last-minute guidance for secondary schools in lockdown areas, which includes a “rota system” limiting the number of students in attendance at any one time.
The Department for Education (DfE) published the guidance on Friday evening, shortly before the bank holiday weekend and only days away from the start of autumn term.
In his letter to parents on Sunday, Williamson said it was generally accepted that children’s health and wellbeing was more at risk if they did not go to school.
He referred to a joint statement by the UK’s chief medical officers, which said very few, if any children and teenagers would come to long-term harm from the virus solely by attending school.
Some of the measures Williamson highlighted include children being put in groups, or “bubbles”, to limit contact, and the use of face coverings in communal areas of schools under local lockdown.
He said “huge lengths” had been gone to in preparing schools for the return of pupils. “Based on this, our priority now is to get all our children back. It really is the best place for them to be,” he said.
Schools should base their plans on a four-tier system, and the extra measures for secondary schools should kick in at the second tier, according to the guidance released on Friday.
All schools remain open at tier one, while tiers three and four mean more stringent restrictions such as closures to all but pupils in vulnerable groups or children of key workers.
A tier two response will lead to secondary schools and colleges in a restricted area moving to a rota system, which means pupils will spend two weeks on-site followed by two weeks at home.
The shadow education secretary, Kate Green, told Sky News the guidelines were long overdue, and that the timing of the release of information was unfair to headteachers and school leaders.
Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “It was obvious weeks ago that lockdown advice was necessary,” he said in a statement. “The government’s decision to publish this at 9pm on the Friday of the bank holiday weekend before most schools are due to return is nothing short of reprehensible and demonstrates a complete lack of regard for the wellbeing of school leaders and their teams.”
Mary Bousted, the joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said the advice should have been available months ago, and that schools had been left to “go it alone” if they needed to organise remote learning.