Quarter Of A Million Kids In England Missed School Last Week Due to Covid

 A quarter of a million kids in England missed school last week due to the fact of Covid infections, self-isolation or school closures, making it the most disrupted week since schools utterly reopened in March and prompting calls for students to be vaccinated.

The upsurge has been most marked in northern centres such as Oldham, where Covid-related absences in schools are greater than double the national rate. Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, stated that self-isolation policies for kids needed to be reformed to avoid further disruption to their education.

The national figures from the Department for Education (DfE) showed that one infant in every 30 at state school was out of the classroom on 17 June, including 9,000 students with proven Covid-19 cases, 16,000 with suspected cases and more than 7,000 whose schools had shut entirely because of Covid outbreaks.

The majority of absences came after contact with suspected or proven cases within schools, with 172,000 students self-isolating last week, compared with 40,000 the week before. Just 42,000 were self-isolating due to the fact of contacts outside their school.

Burnham called for a “more proportionate” handling of self-isolation: “Obviously if people are testing positive, then that is an issue that needs to be dealt with. But when it comes to the contacts of those kids, then perhaps there are other preparations that can be looked at.”