UK POLITICS

Senior Tory demands data be published on Schools closures or we risk ‘epidemic of educational poverty’

29 December, 2020
Oliver Down

The chair of the Education Select Committee and senior Tory Robert Halfon has requested that Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance publish the data that is being used to pressure Boris Johnson into closing schools until February. This comes against the backdrop of warnings that a third national lockdown would spark an ‘epidemic of educational poverty’ in Britain.

Mr Halfon has questioned whether the new strain of Covid-19 is having has as much of an impact as has been reported and is warning against condemning millions of children to ‘sub-standard’ online classes.

This morning Halfon said: ‘We haven’t had the advice from the chief medical officer and the chief science officer, previously they were saying time and time again that the risks to Covid for children were low and that there were marginal transmission rates. I asked a very senior public health England official only just before Christmas whether or not this new variant made a difference and he said there was no evidence for that. So, what we need to do is hear from the chief medical officer and chief science officer what exactly is the scientific evidence, because at the moment we don’t know for sure’. 

Professor Andrew Hayward who is the head of infectious diseases epidemiology at University College London and a Government advisor has said that in order for pupils to return to schools in January, stricter restrictions will be needed in other areas of society to avoid a Covid ‘catastrophe’. He has said: ‘We’re going to need decisive, early, national action to prevent a catastrophe in January and February. We’ve had control measures that were previously controlling the old variant are not enough for this variant. And so, if we want to control the new variant, we are going to need much tighter restrictions’.

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