Some of the youngest pupils are back in classrooms in Wales and Scotland, but ministers in the two nations have insisted that they will phase the return for other year groups rather than follow the English model of reopening schools to all pupils at the same time.
The Welsh education minister, Kirsty Williams, said she had seen no scientific evidence to support the UK government’s plan for all pupils to return to school in England on 8 March.
Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said a “very careful and cautious” restart to schooling would allow her government to monitor Covid infections and make sure they did not start climbing again as classes resumed.
Speaking in Cardiff, Williams said she was delighted to see the cheerful faces of primary school pupils aged three to seven back at school.
She told a press briefing that if conditions continued to improve over the next three weeks, then all primary-age children could start to return to classrooms from 15 March, along with older students who are taking exams.
She said her preference was for all learners to be back in school and college after the Easter holidays, which end in Wales on 12 April.
Asked about the plan for all schools in England to reopen on 8 March, she said: “I haven’t received any new evidence or advice that supports a different approach to the one we’re taking here in Wales. Our phased and very careful approach is in line with the public health advice and is consistent with UK-wide advice.”
Wales’ deputy chief medical officer, Chris Jones said: “We know that opening schools will increase the R value. A cautious approach where we introduce the lowest-risk children back to school first and evaluate the impact will teach us a great deal. If we relax conditions too quickly, we face a very substantial risk of a big increase in cases and hospitalisations and death.”
Classes restarted on Monday morning in Scotland for primary years 1 to 3, nurseries and pre-school children, and some teenagers sitting practical exams. Sturgeon said no other age groups would be allowed to resume before 15 March at the earliest.
She said the impact of lockdown on children was “horrible, it’s awful. It’s probably the worst thing about this pandemic apart from the death rate”. With the current community infection rate believed to be between 0.7 and 0.9 in Scotland, she said there was not enough “headroom” to allow greater relaxations.
“I think if we were to do that right now, we would send transmission through the roof again, very quickly. That’s not about fear of transmission inside schools as much as about the overall interactions that that would spark, in the wider population,” she said.
Sturgeon insisted, however, that she was not criticising Boris Johnson’s plan to reopen all England’s schools on the same day.
Unions have continued to call for teachers to be vaccinated. Neil Butler, the NASUWT national official for Wales, said: “We believe that a return to school settings is premature. We have made it clear that we would want to see the education workforce vaccinated before returning to face to face teaching. Our members are telling us that they will return, but they are terrified. This is unacceptable.”
