An Edinburgh public health expert has said that reopening preschools, nurseries and primary schools poses less of a risk of increasing Covid transmissions than secondary schools.
Scottish pupils across the country returned to remote learning on Monday as schools remain shut until at least the end of January.
Devi Sridhar, who reviews evidence on schools during the pandemic Royal Society - which provides input to Sage and the Scottish Government’s Covid-19 advisory group - insists that reopening schools is about balancing the risks.
Writing in the Guardian, she reveals that the experts may have "overestimated the effectiveness of closing schools", pointing to data that suggests transmission between staff is the most common way to spread the virus in schools and that it's "not certain" whether schoolchildren pose a risk to members of their household.
The expert argues that schools should not be thought of as zones of transmission, writing: "It’s more accurate to think of them as reflections of the existing rate of transmission: when cases rise in a community, so do the number of outbreaks that occur in schools. But the latter is not necessarily the cause of the former."
Adding that the uncertainty around the new variant has made the situation more complicated, the professor urged people to follow the restrictions which are in place, writing that one sure way to reopen schools more quickly "is to reduce the number of infections across the population".
But she also added that when considering reopening schools, secondary schools pose are at higher risk of Covid transmissions than primary schools, or preschools and nurseries.
To receive one WhatsApp message a day with Edinburgh Live's headlines, as well as breaking news alerts, text NEWS to 07899067815. Then add the number to your contacts as 'Edinburgh Live'.
She said: "It’s also clear that reopening preschools, nurseries and primary schools will pose less of a risk to Covid transmission than reopening secondary schools.
"The greater challenge is keeping schools open for the foreseeable future, and avoiding a situation where outbreaks force bubbles and entire classes of children to isolate intermittently, disrupting their education."
Insisting there a range of measures that the government could introduce to help keep schools open, she suggests testing in schools, supported isolation for students, as well as funding to improve ventilation in schools and prioritising teachers and school staff in the vaccination programme.
