News shared by Peter Shreeve, Assistant District Secretary, Isle of Wight – National Education Union. Ed
The Office for National Statistics’ latest infection survey shows that secondary-age pupils now have the highest rate of infection of any age group. Whilst it has fallen a little as a result of the half-term holiday, it is likely to carry on increasing.
The National Education Union has today received a letter from Sir Patrick Vallance and Professor Sir Ian Diamond in response to questions posed on 20 October. The letter confirms that ONS and SAGE will be collecting data on school bubbles and ventilation, which is particularly important given the emerging evidence on airborne transmission of the virus.
Infection rate trajectory could make lockdown less effective
The NEU is concerned that the continued infection rate trajectory in schools will make this lockdown less effective, and not make the sacrifice worthwhile.
Initial indications show that R has not come down far enough: ZOE estimate it to be 0.9, whilst SAGE estimate it 1.0 – 1.2 (4). This indicates while coronavirus might go into retreat, it will not retreat very far.
Shreeve: Clear and sharp trend in infection rates among secondary school pupils
Peter Shreeve, Assistant District Secretary of the National Education Union said:
“The Island has seen a sudden upturn in school cases over the last week. As reported by News OnTheWight there were ten individual cases in schools during this week. Certainly, the highest this term.
“This upward tendency matches the concern by SAGE, whose finding was that children aged 12-16 played a ‘significantly higher role’ in introducing infection into households after schools reopened their doors to all students.
“Yesterday, the Isle of Wight Council indicated 403 pupils and 16 staff were self-isolating. Numbers are surely even greater as family members should surely be taking extra precautions.
“New national evidence from Public Health England showing the positivity rate amongst school-age children is extremely high. For secondary age children it is 18% and for primary age children 12% with the highest year groups being Years 10 and 11. The level of testing amongst school-age children has actually fallen in recent weeks. This means only a tiny proportion of pupils with coronavirus are self-isolating. We call on the Government to take urgent steps to massively increase the level of testing for school pupils.
“SAGE has now recognised the important role that schools and school-age children play in virus transmission. We have been concerned for some time that the erroneous belief, that children do not play a significant role in the transmission of coronavirus, was badly distorting policy. This is in spite of a clear and sharp trend in infection rates among secondary school pupils in particular since the start of term, but particularly in the last seven days on the Island.”
Call for Government to play more active role
He went on to add,
“We call on the Government to play a much more active role to suppress Covid transmission within schools. Schools have gone to great lengths to make themselves as safe as possible but there is only so much they can do on their own. We proposed a ten-point plan in June with suggestions of hiring additional space and teachers, thereby reducing class sizes. More recently we proposed ideas to enable social distancing by using rotas for older secondary school pupils. All these suggestions were ignored.
“We are grateful to Sir Patrick Vallance and Professor Sir Ian Diamond for pointing out that the success with rotas
“is reliant on children in the different groups not mixing (e.g. those attending in week 1 not mixing with those attending in week 2), and on classmates not mixing outside of school and in the time off from school. Its effectiveness is also reduced by multiple children from the same household attending different groups or schools.”
No additional funding
However, the same could easily be said about all measures to mitigate Covid transmission. Thus, rotas should be investigated further.
“Schools have been given inadequate advice – more often than not delivered at the last minute – and with no additional funding.
“This situation is untenable and widespread disruption will continue unless the Government takes steps to get coronavirus under control in schools.”
