Schools must only open on a week on, week off system post lockdown, union says

Schools must only open on a week on, week off system post lockdown, the country's biggest teacher union has demanded.

Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU) has said that rotas should stay in place at secondary schools and sixth form colleges for "as long as necessary".

The union has already called for schools to close during lockdown, a demand which was echoed on Monday by the Greater Manchester mayor.

Andy Burnham said that schools should close so that the 'full benefits' of a national lockdown can be felt. “If we’re going to do this, let’s do it properly and get cases right down before January - traditionally the most difficult month in the NHS," he told Sky News.

"Let's get the full benefits of a national lockdown. Of course it’s difficult closing schools, but I think schools will be less disrupted if we get this real circuit break. To be honest, it’s not a proper circuit break unless we really do close everything."

The NEU said that given the growth in cases among secondary school aged children, rotas should be introduced following the lockdown whereby students are taught at home part of the time. 

The union's analysis of the latest data from the Office of National Statistics showed that Covid-19 rates among secondary school pupils are among the highest in the country.

"The rota system would run for as long as necessary, certainly until we have a fit-for-purpose test, trace and isolate system," Mr Courtney said.  

"The need for rotas will lessen when safety measures are significantly improved, and when the R rate has reduced to below one."

Public Health England (PHE)  said that the "most likely" place children will get infected with Covid-19 is in their homes.

Asked if the transmission risk in schools was high, Dr Susan Hopkins, deputy director of PHE, told Times Radio Breakfast: "We don't know exactly. We do know that the majority of children have infection that's related to infection in their households, which is clearly the most likely place that children will get infected."

She added: "We have also agreed that we want our children to be in education, that we think that the damage done from a year of children's education lost is too high for us to accept as a society."

Downing Street said that millions of "cheap, reliable and rapid turnaround tests" will be rolled out in schools across the country, allowing students and teachers to see if they are infectious in ten to 15 minutes.

"What we know from trialling them in schools as well as hospitals is that we can use the tests not just to locate people who have the virus but also to drive down the disease," the Prime Minister's spokesman said.

"What you'll be seeing in the coming days and weeks is an expansion in the deployment of the quick turnaround tests.

 "We have brought the army in to work on the logistics of distributing the tests and I would expect that programme to begin work this week."