Set out “components of the strategy” for schools return, Green tells government

Kate Green has told government ministers that they must set out the “components of the strategy” for returning children to schools as Boris Johnson has suggested that the current restrictions could start to ease next month.

Speaking to BBC News this morning, the Shadow Education Secretary urged the government to specify the criteria ministers will use to decide that it is time to reopen schools and the “practical steps” to ensure they are safe.

Green told viewers: “I’m very keen obviously that we do have children return to the classroom as swiftly as possible and as soon as it’s safe for them to do so but we don’t know what the government’s plan is for achieving that.

“And I think it is really important that they at least set out the components of the strategy for getting children back so that parents and schools can have certainty and schools can start to plan the steps that would be needed to bring children and staff back safely.”

Green urged clarity on the circumstances in which the ministers would consider sending children back to the classroom and emphasised the importance that the government work with teachers, unions and professional organisations on its plan.

She argued: “Matt Hancock himself set out the criteria that he would be looking at for schools to return and I do think we need to know more specifically what he means by things like effective roll-out of the vaccine… What sort of numbers are we talking about here?

“But, more importantly here, is that we actually know that the government is making the preparations for the necessary practical steps to bring children and young people back safely.

“That means working with schools, working with the education unions and professional organisations and it is about things like whether you bring all children back at once or whether you bring them back on a phased basis.”

The Labour Party has suggested the government set up ‘Nightingale schools’. Green explained this morning that this would allow education providers to “ensure safe social distancing” as young people return to the classroom.

She added: “It is also about getting the roll-out of testing in schools working effectively and there have been concerns about the way it was rushed out just before the Christmas holidays and may not be as effective as it needs to be…

“What we need, as much as knowing what circumstances would need to be in place in order for the government to say children could start to return to schools, we also need to know the practical steps that are going to be needed and that will be put in place.

“And that means schools will need time to plan and parents need to have time to prepare before their children return.”

Her comments come as the Prime Minister told Sky News this morning that “schools will be a priority” when the government considers relaxing the national lockdown currently in place in England to suppress transmission of coronavirus.

The government has set a date for reviewing the progress of the lockdown of February 15th, but Johnson said today that ministers will be “looking at the potential of relaxing some measures” before mid-February.

The Prime Minister’s remarks in the interview this morning, during which he said “we’ll be deciding before then whether we can be getting schools back”, put him at odds with recent comments from his own government ministers.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson was expected to confirm this week that there will be no return to the classroom after the February half-term break and Matt Hancock refused on Sunday to guarantee that schools would reopen before Easter.

The Health Secretary told the public in a televised interview that the full reopening of schools before Easter was a “hope” rather than an expectation and warned that the easing of the current lockdown measures is a “long, long, long way” off.

The Prime Minister and Education Secretary are facing increasing pressure to set out a strategy for schools, to provide certainty for parents, children and schools, from both the opposition and within their own party.

Tory MP and chair of the Commons education committee Robert Halfon attempted to summon a minister to parliament today for an urgent question to provide “an education route map out of coronavirus to get children learning again at school”.

Former cabinet minister Esther McVey MP has said the government “genuinely seems to have forgotten about the children” as the majority continue with remote learning and warned that young people are “the pandemic’s forgotten victims”.