Around 1,000 pupils have been sent home from Dumfries and Galloway schools this term amid Covid scares.
Youngsters have been instructed to take a PCR test at home and, when a negative result appears, they are generally back in class within a day.
The precautionary measures have been effective and head teachers have reported that the process works well to ensure education isn’t badly disrupted.
However, there is still a risk of a class being sent home or entire school being closed if 20 per cent of pupils test positive for Covid.
Annie Johnson is the Dumfries and Galloway Council officer leading on the testing programme in partnership with Public Health Scotland colleagues.
Speaking at the council’s response, renewal and recovery sub-committee last Thursday, she said: “We have seen – as we did post-summer – a rise in the number of cases after the holiday period.
“It’s primarily been primary aged school pupils that we’ve been seeing cases with.
“We have a monitoring brief with schools, so we don’t necessarily take action if there are one or two cases in a classroom.
“However, if we reach a threshold of around 20 percent of a class, and we are seeing general levels of illness within that classroom, then we will talk to Public Health (Scotland).
“We have incident management team meetings three times weekly, so we are able to react quickly if need be.
“We’re trying very much to balance the need to isolate and continuity of education.
“When we reach that threshold, we will discuss with public health and we may ask a classroom or a school, depending on numbers and spread across the board, to go home and isolate until they have a negative PCR.
“I can’t think of an instance where that’s taken more than one day, so the impact is minimal.
“We’re getting a lot of positive feedback from head teachers about how that process is working.
“We meet weekly with public health to make sure that the process remains good, and we tweak things as and when necessary.
“But I feel we’re keeping the impact absolutely to a minimum.
“We’ve had around 1,000 pupils who have been affected in terms of having to go home and be PCR tested this term. That has been no more than a day.”
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