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Editorial: Teachers' infection rates: time to listen to the professionals and protect our schools

STATISTICS showing teachers are 37 per cent more likely to contract Covid-19 than other workers ought to be a wake-up call to ministers.

Unfortunately if there is one thing the government has demonstrated in the 20 months coronavirus has stalked the land, it is that pressure for the measures necessary to protect pupils, teachers and the communities they live and work in will have to come from below.

We have seen this before. Schools were the key engines of virus spread in the autumn of 2020, with transmission levels higher among school-age pupils than any other age group.

As experts pointed out, the spread of the virus in schools is always likely to lead to its explosion among the general population because children have a wide transmission circle: they do not live alone and they are less likely to be able to isolate from family or carers. 

The Office for National Statistics figures on infection rates among teachers are indeed from the latter half of November and a few weeks on we are seeing the uncontrolled spread of the omicron variant across Britain as a whole. 

Omicron may be milder than previous variants and the fact the population is majority double-vaccinated is undoubtedly saving lives, but the sheer numbers are going to mean a big spike in hospitalisations and deaths.

They also give the virus plenty of opportunities to mutate further, another problem with those who make a case for “living with” Covid rather than adopting strategies to minimise transmission. New peaks mean new variants and new variants will mean new peaks.

There may well have been no way to prevent the omicron variant reaching these shores, though we should not let the government off the hook given the impact of its opposition to a vaccine patent waiver on poorer countries’ ability to suppress the virus.

But there were ways to stop schools becoming intensive Covid incubators. 

It has been clear for over a year that the government would not heed calls from the National Education Union for a mass teacher recruitment drive to facilitate smaller class sizes. 

That does not excuse Labour’s refusal to back unions and campaign on this demand, which could have been a game changer for schools and would have had incalculable benefits — through increasing one-on-one teacher-pupil time — for efforts to make up for the significant disruption Covid has already caused to millions of children’s educations.

Now, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi feebly calls on heads to try to convince people who have left the profession to sign up as supply teachers to help with temporary shortages caused by illness.

While returning to the profession for a medium-term shift to smaller class sizes might have been an attractive prospect for many ex-teachers, plugging gaps in a system struggling because of soaring infection rates seems less likely to appeal. 

Schools have also been short-changed by a government that has failed to invest in recovery. Many remain poorly ventilated despite education unions flagging proper ventilators as a priority back in the summer, when there was time to act.

Teachers have been demonised in the press, insulted and patronised throughout this pandemic. The least government can do now, in light of statistical proof of the risks they are running, is listen to them and their trade union representatives. 

We need investment in ventilation and air filtration. We need mask-wearing in schools. We need siblings to isolate after infection cases, and isolation of close contacts after a positive case rather than applying this only for omicron cases — given the delay in identifying which variant is involved.

We need to treat education professionals with respect, and avoid the ludicrous and highly disruptive farce we saw at the beginning of the year when pupils were sent home from their shuttered schools on day one of the January term.

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