Boris Johnson has confirmed the government expects secondaries to start to provide face-to-face support for year 10 and 12 pupils, from June 1 to June 15.
On 10 May the Prime Minister announced a roadmap towards recovery, outlining the phased return of some pupils to education settings from the week commencing 1 June, including that secondary pupils facing exams next year will get some face-to-face support from their teachers this term, subject to the government’s 5 tests being met.
This guide is designed for mainstream and alternative provision secondary schools (including those with a school sixth form).
Thee government is asking all schools to adopt a range of approaches and actions which can be seen as a hierarchy of controls that, when implemented, create an inherently safer environment, where the risk of transmission of infection is substantially reduced. This includes:
- minimising contact with individuals who are unwell by ensuring that pupils or staff who have coronavirus symptoms, or who have someone in their household who does, do not attend school
- cleaning hands more often than usual - pupils and staff should be encouraged to regularly wash their hands thoroughly for 20 seconds with running water and soap and dry them thoroughly, or use alcohol hand rub or sanitiser ensuring that all parts of the hands are covered
- ensuring good respiratory hygiene by promoting the ‘catch it, bin it, kill it’ approach
- cleaning frequently touched surfaces often, using standard products such as detergents and bleach
- minimising contact and mixing, as far as possible, by keeping pupils in small groups for face-to-face support and keeping those groups as consistent as possible whilst in school (e.g. for arrival, lunchtime, breaks and departure) and altering the school environment (e.g. changing classroom layouts so desks are further apart or dividing groups into different classrooms).
As well as the measures above, secondary schools should ensure that only a quarter of pupils in year 10 and year 12 are in school at any one time, including vulnerable children and children of critical workers in those year groups who are still encouraged to attend full-time. This is in addition to vulnerable pupils and children of critical workers who might be in full-time attendance from other year groups.