Educational Settings: Reopening

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 1:30 pm on 26 January 2021.

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Photo of Nick Gibb Nick Gibb Minister of State (Education) 1:30, 26 January 2021

As I said to Kate Green, we have restricted attendance not because schools are unsafe, but in order to reduce the overall number of social contacts in our community. Both PHE and the Department of Health and Social Care confirm that the system of controls we have in our schools—the extra hand-washing, the hygiene, the ventilation, the one-way systems, the masks in communal areas and so on—create an inherently safer environment for children and staff, where the risk of transmission of infection is substantially reduced. This is about reducing transmission in the community, and it is one of the measures after tier 4 that we introduced to achieve that.

Carol Monaghan asked about the criteria for emerging from the lockdown. As I said at the beginning of this UQ, those criteria include hospitalisation rates, mortality, the rate of vaccination, and the challenge of the new variants, but I can assure the hon. Lady that we will be led by the advice of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, the Joint Biosecurity Centre, PHE, and the chief medical officer in any decisions we make regarding the reopening of schools.