Children are expected to continue to attend school from Monday if they have one parent classified by the government as a key worker. Amid the first nationwide school closure in modern British history, Downing Street has said it wants to keep parents in work who are doing vital jobs – from NHS staff to social workers and delivery drivers – to support crucial sectors that ensure the country continues to function amid the coronavirus pandemic.
A skeleton network of schools and nurseries is set to remain open for the children of key workers. The Department for Education released the details on Thursday evening . Downing Street sources have said the list will apply even if just one parent works in a vital role.
The diverging approaches to school closures may stem from the considerable uncertainty around the extent to which children are playing a role in spreading Covid – .
Children make up a tiny minority of confirmed cases – fewer than 1% of positive tests in China were children under nine. It is probable that a bigger pool are getting infected but only experiencing mild or no symptoms. Among those who have tested positive, nearly 6% developed very serious illness , according to an assessment of 2, patients aged under in Wuhan, with under-fives and babies being most at risk.
A significant unknown is how infectious children are, assuming large numbers are getting infected. Early evidence suggests that around 85% of transmission in the pandemic at large has involved asymptomatic people and children could be among this group.
“It seems most plausible to me that they are being infected but are at low risk of developing disease,” said Prof Peter Smith, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “We know that for flu, children are important transmitters of infection, which is the basis for the flu vaccination program directed at children, but we do not know yet how important they are as transmitters of coronavirus. So closing schools would be based on the assumption that they do make an important contribution to transmission. ”
Rates of various illnesses are seen to rise and fall at the start and end of school terms. School holidays were thought to have led to a plateau in the 2009 swine flu pandemic. Also advised hygiene and social distancing measures, such as hand washing and reduced physical contact, just aren’t very effective in a primary school playground setting. So there is the potential for schools to act as a local fountain of infection for the surrounding area.
“Every mother and father knows that when kids go back to school they’re going to get hammered by colds and flus and sore throats,” said Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia.
This uncertain science has to be carefully weighed against the certain disruption and cost of school closures, including taking large numbers of doctors and nurses out of the workplace, and unintended consequences such as grandparents, who are among the most vulnerable, taking on childcare and facing greater exposure.
The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, announced on Wednesday that schools across the country will be closed from Monday to try to reduce the virus’s peak, with no set date to reopen. All exams have been cancelled.
Children of eligible parents will be supervised in school but not taught the national curriculum. School staff have been concerned about having little time to prepare for the new system and work out which children they will care for.
Confusion over what parents should expect led some workers to ask the Department for Education for clarity on Twitter. A teacher in the north-west tweeted: “Today we were expecting a list of key workers. A list that would mean we could collate numbers of students, create a staff rota & plan the structure of the school day. At a time of huge stress for both staff and parents this was the least you should have done. ”
One nursery provider tweeted on Thursday that they urgently needed the list of key workers so they could offer nursery places to the right people.
There remained confusion over the offer, with some schools still under the impression that both parents had to be key workers for children to be allowed to keep attending classes. The chair of the Labor party, Ian Lavery MP, said: “The government needs to urgently release this list and start giving much clearer guidance to the public. The more confusion and lack of clarity over official guidance and support for people incomes, the more difficult it is to keep people safe and healthy. ”
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