I am angry. You should be too. Throughout this pandemic you have worked on the front line to help keep children and families safe and protect education. Throughout this pandemic our leaders in Westminster have promised to ‘follow the science’ and focus on ‘data not dates’. And yet throughout this pandemic key decisions seem, time and again, to have been made without any nod to ‘the science’.
This is bound to irk health professionals – after all, in your daily lives you embrace the importance of ensuring practice is evidence-based and reflective.
Cases of the Delta variant (B1.617.2) in the UK are soaring. Figures from 3 June show 12 431 cases – up by 5 472 in just one week (Public Health England [PHE], 2021a). And the government's attitude to the alarming spread of the Delta COVID variant in schools in the two biggest epicentres of the outbreak, Bolton and Blackburn with Darwen, is the final straw for me.
The picture is worrying. Attendance figures for 27 May for schools in Bolton show that 21% of primary and 32% of secondary pupils were absent for COVID-related reasons. The figures in Blackburn with Darwen were 15% and 13%, respectively. This compares to a national figure for COVID-19-related absence on 27 May of just 1.8% (Department for Education, 2021). Staff in schools in these areas are similarly affected.
On 3 June, PHE said that there had been 97 confirmed COVID-19 outbreaks in schools that have had at least one variant case linked to them over the most recent 4-week period (including 87 Delta cases). This represents around one in 250 schools (PHE, 2021b).
What is perhaps the most infuriating is that the figures of variant spread in schools should have been made public much earlier. Publication was delayed around the time the government was removing the requirement to wear face masks in secondary schools. Is this a case of inconvenient data being held back to leave ministers free to make popular announcements? Call me cynical…
While we are told we are ‘following the science’, the truth seems to be that ministers are only following the science when it backs up their policies. Any other awkward science or data seem too often to get buried (or at least delayed).
There is no clearer proof when we see that secondary school-age students now have the highest rates of COVID-19 infection of all age groups. The data shows that 0.5% of secondary-aged students tested positive for COVID in the week ending 29 May – the highest rate of any age category (Office for National Statistics, 2021). And yet we are relaxing mask-wearing measures in schools. You could not make it up.
The National Education Union (2021) has said that the unfolding crisis in Bolton and Blackburn with Darwen is ‘a warning for the rest of the country about the potential spread of COVID in schools’. Even now, we can still try and reduce spread in schools and in the community: let us act quickly to reestablish masks in secondary classrooms, support schools in improving ventilation to mitigate airborne transmission, address airborne transmission in closed spaces in the community – and let us delay or adapt the roadmap.