Schools are being urged not to send pupils home if one child tests positive for Covid amid calls for the school “bubble” system to be scrapped on July 19.
Downing Street has said decisions about which pupils should be sent home can be made on a “case-by-case basis” amid growing pressure on ministers with number of pupils sent home to isolate because of possible contact with a Covid-19 case having quadrupled this month.
The latest weekly figures available for Norfolk, for the last week of May, show 34 were absent from school with confirmed Covid and 106 had been sent home suspected of having the virus.
Some 470 were absent because of potential contact in school, twice the number seen a month earlier, and a further 161 because of potential contact outside school.
There has been a quadrupling of pupils isolating at home from school this month.
– Credit: PA
Large bubbles – sometimes numbering more than 200 – being forced to miss out on in-person teaching because of a single Covid case has led to concerns on the impact of pupils and families.
Chris Read,…
