Testing time for pupils
Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, spelled out the government’s strategy at tonight’s No 10 press briefing for getting pupils back to school as well as plans to help those who have fallen behind with summer schools and one to one teaching.
Students will be back in the classroom from 8 March, but secondary schools and colleges will stagger the return to allow for asymptomatic testing facilities to be set up.
Williamson had earlier today confirmed that the testing regime would consist of “three Covid tests over a two-week period [for] the first two weeks.” Parents should help their kids to take these tests, he said.
However effective mass testing might be, the practicalities look nightmarish. Even Dr Jenny Harries, who appeared alongside Williamson this evening, has said before that schools are not big drivers of infections.
“We have already been doing a lot of work to get this ready,” Williamson assured listeners on Radio 4 this morning. “But we do recognise this is a huge logistical task.”
Williamson also fleshed out plans for secondary schools in England to have the option of providing face-to-face summer schools as part of a package of measures designed to help pupils catch up. The focus will be on tutoring, one on one and in small groups, targeted at the students who have struggled most. The full programme runs to £700 million, £400 million of which is new.
The scheme is voluntary: it will be up to schools to decide how and if they run summer schools, how long they will be, and which pupils will be invited to attend.
While teachers, unions and education experts have called the programme a “good start”, there are concerns it may only help better-off kids. Sam Strickland, head teacher of a Northampton academy said: “The pupils most likely to be behind [academically] are those most likely to have avoided engaging with remote learning, are school refusers, or aren’t engaged anyway. I cannot see those pupils, who need it most, actually attending.”
Williamson was thought to have been flirting with the idea of shortening the summer holidays or extending the school day. There was no mention of either tonight.
Trailing an announcement on the exams system to be made tomorrow, the Education Secretary promised “no algorithms” would be used to determine pupils’ exam results this year and that “trust will be put firmly in the hands of teachers.” Lesson learnt.
COVAX to the rescue
The WHO’s COVAX vaccine sharing scheme delivered its first 600,000 doses today to Ghana, where the rollout will begin with healthcare workers.
The COVAX initiative was set up to ensure that poorer countries have access to vaccines at the same time as wealthier ones, a key step in ending the pandemic as quickly as possible.
Ghana is one of the 92 low and middle-income countries that will receive the AstraZeneca doses for free under the scheme.
The programme, to which Britain has committed £548 million, aims to deliver about two billion doses worldwide by the end of the year. It will be the largest vaccine supply operation in history.
The UK, which ordered a smorgasbord of 400 million doses before the efficacy of any of the jabs was known, has also promised to donate most of its surplus stock to poorer countries.
The news comes as the WHO’s latest coronavirus report showed that the number of infections recorded globally has been in decline for six weeks in a row.
New cases, which stood at 2.4 million last week, dropped by 11 per cent compared to the previous seven-day period, and new deaths also fell by 20 per cent.
Sturgeon vs Salmond
The gloves are off in Scotland’s spiraling political farce after Nicola Sturgeon labelled her erstwhile mentor Alex Salmond a “dangerous conspiracy theorist”. He preferred, she said, to create “an alternative reality” in which the “organs of the state… were all part of some wild conspiracy.”
Sturgeon also flatly denied suggestions that the redaction of the evidence submitted by Salmond to the Scottish parliamentary inquiry into the handling of sexual assault allegations made against him had been politically motivated.
The mood in Holyrood is sulphurous. Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross MP, not yet an MSP, has accused the SNP of organising a cover-up while Tory MSP Murdo Fraser called the Nationalists a “cesspit of vipers not fit for Government”.
Labour and Conservative MSPs are demanding that the Crown Office, the body in charge of public prosecutions in Scotland, explains why it insisted on the redactions. The inquiry committee is also set to use parliamentary powers to force the Crown Office to publish Salmond’s evidence in full. See Joseph Rachman for more below.
Salmond will appear before the committee on Friday. More drama to come.
Mattie Brignal,
News Editor