In todays "Times"
"Schools could reopen in a few weeks as coronavirus restrictions begin to be lifted, Public Health England suggested this morning.
Paul Cosford, the agency’s emeritus medical director, said that easing the lockdown for the young first was being considered as ministers look to set out an exit plan for the coming weeks.
Finding a way out of lockdown is the government’s “number one topic and priority”, according to Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, one of its leading advisers on the epidemic.
Professor Cosford said: “People are doing really well with the social distancing and it is working as far as we can see to flatten this pandemic,” but acknowledged the balance between controlling the epidemic and allowing normal life to resume.
He said that now was not the moment to relent, telling Today on BBC Radio 4: “Once you start getting things under control, that’s the time you absolutely need to continue with all your measures so that you can bring the disease right down and crack it.”
He expects there to be “a lot of discussions over the next week or so” about an exit strategy. Asked if restrictions might be eased in several weeks, he said: “I think several weeks isn’t unreasonable. Let’s hope it’s sooner than that.”
He said that starting by letting the young resume normal life was being considered. “The importance of children’s education, children being in school is paramount. That’s not the only issue but I could conceive of circumstances where some of the restrictions are lifted sooner and some are lifted later,” he said.
“There are some really difficult issues here because if you look at children and the closure of schools, a very important measure to help get this under control, but we do know that children are very low risk of getting serious complications of this disease.”
Professor Ferguson told the same programme that while hospital admissions appeared to be plateauing, “it’s going to be several more weeks before we can definitively conclude anything about the rate of decline and therefore when measures could be lifted”.
He said it was “good news” that more people were obeying social distancing rules than the government expected and said that “measures will be targeted probably by age, by geography” on lifting lockdown.
“There are lots of ideas worth exploring. That’s what’s happening right now. We clearly don’t want these measures to continue longer than is absolutely necessary — the economic costs, social costs, personal costs and health costs are huge.”
Head teachers are lobbying the government to reopen schools before the summer holidays, even for just a few weeks, if scientific advice says that it is safe.
Paul Whiteman and Geoff Barton, the general secretaries of the NAHT and ASCL head teachers’ unions, have told ministers pupils would benefit greatly from schools reopening before the summer, rather than waiting until September.
They believe that even a few weeks of school would help pupils remember what formal learning is like and what is required of them. If schools do not open before the summer children will have been away from the classroom and formal learning for more than five months.
The Department for Education is said to have shown a “genuine interest” in the approach, which would see pupils return for a number of weeks during the summer term to “reacquaint themselves with the educational environment”.
The government has made clear that it is too soon to consider reopening schools after the Easter holidays following speculation that pupils could return as soon as April 20.
“That said, once the scientific advice is that schools can return safely, they should do so, even if it’s for a very limited period before the summer break, as this will allow young people to reacquaint themselves with the educational environment,” the two leaders told Schools Week journal.
However, they warned that any return to normality “has to be a planned one”.
“It can’t be about flicking a switch on a Friday night and then thinking it’s all going to be all right on a Monday morning,” they said.