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National Education Union advises teachers not to enter schools on safety grounds as Covid cases soar

HUNDREDS of thousands of teachers could refuse to work this week on health and safety grounds unless schools are closed to all but vulnerable children and children of key workers.

The National Education Union (NEU) will inform its members that it is not safe to enter schools before mid-January given the government’s loss of control over the rising tide of Covid-19 infections.

It will advise them to refuse to enter their workplaces under Section 44 of the Health and Safety Act, on the grounds that the government has not taken steps to ensure schools are safe environments for pupils or staff.

All learning should be shifted online “in all primary schools including primary special schools in England for at least two weeks.”

NEU joint general secretary Kevin Courtney said that “the science suggests that to get infection rates down schools should not be open in the first two weeks of January.

“Cases were rising rapidly amongst school age children at the end of last term and they were the highest rates of any demographics. These children live as part of families and in communities and they can spread the infection into their families and into the wider community. 

“There is scientific concern that the new variant might be more prevalent amongst younger people than the previous variants. 

 “We are calling on Gavin Williamson to actually do what he professes he does – to follow the science and announce, now, that primary schools in England should move learning online - apart from key worker and vulnerable children for at least the first two weeks of January.

“It is not good enough to always be behind the curve, playing catch up with new strains of Covid, seeing hospital admissions rise and cases numbers spiral out of control.”

The government U-turned on New Year’s Day on primary school reopening in London, but still intends to reopen schools as normal from Monday in many parts of the country despite evidence that they have been an engine of virus transmission over the autumn.

But the decision by the NEU – Britain’s largest education union with over 450,000 members – could leave its plans in tatters.

The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) and the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) have already taken legal action against the government, calling on it to “remove people in schools from the physical harm caused by the current progress of the disease and to work with the profession and Public Health England to establish new protocols and interventions to make schools Covid-secure.”

NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman wrote to members today advising them to urgently contact their local authority or trust if significant numbers of staff refuse to enter workplaces on safety grounds under Section 44, noting that a lack of staff would itself compel new risk assessments as to whether a school could open at all.

The ASCL called on the government to explain how it differentiated the risk posed by opening primary and secondary schools, given it is making different recommendations for them.

Confirmed Covid-19 cases are currently rising by over 50,000 a day across the UK and deaths approached 1,000 a day in the last days of December.

Both the NEU and fellow teaching union NASUWT have called on the government to postpone the start of in-school learning by a fortnight except for vulnerable children and those of key workers and to roll out mass testing of pupils and staff and vaccinations for education workers.

GMB, which organises school support staff, yesterday called on the government to show “common sense” and “postpone the reopening of all schools in England until appropriate safeguards can be put in place.” 

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