Education Return and Awarding Qualifications in 2021 — House of Commons, 2021-02-25
Topic: Health
Gavin Alexander Williamson (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Lady for her questions. She raises the question of vaccinations for staff. She will have seen in the road map that the Prime Minister launched on Monday that the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation is to look at two strands. The first involves people who are most vulnerable to either being hospitalised or sadly passing away as a result of catching the covid virus, and we will be making sure that that is one of the strands that needs to be vaccinated out of those groups. Also, the committee will look at those jobs and professions—not just teachers but transport workers, supermarket staff and the many others who do an amazing job in public-facing roles—to see what the needs of those workforces are. I do not want to pre-empt the independent work of the JCVI, but we look forward to seeing what it says On the hon. Lady’s suggestion on moving to rotas, that is not a route that we want to go down. We on this side of the House want to have all children back in full-time education. We think that school is the best place for children to be, and we think it is important for them to have full-time education in the classroom. That is why we felt that, when we were able to do so, it was better to welcome all children back into the classroom every day of every week The hon. Lady briefly touched on testing. Testing will be an important part of keeping classrooms covid-free. The roll-out of testing that has been happening over the last seven weeks has been incredibly successful. We have had some of the highest rates of uptake in testing of any workforce area and in any individual setting. Not unsurprisingly, schools have readily adapted to the testing regime. So far, out of all the asymptomatic testing stations that we are hoping to set up across schools, colleges and special schools, 97% of those settings have set up asymptomatic testing centres, and obviously there are 3% that we are targeting resources and focus on, to ensure that they are ready to do testing for welcoming children back on 8 March. Testing is important for keeping covid out of the classroom I note the hon. Lady’s comments on exams, and we will work with the exam boards and do everything we can to ensure that there is the absolute maximum amount of guidance, training and support for all teachers on giving the grades out and making the assessment of the correct grade. We have been working closely with the exam boards to ensure that this is done swiftly to support teachers. I know that they will be offering a broad range of support to all teachers and schools to ensure that teacher-assessed grades are done fairly right across the system. The hon. Lady makes an important point about having as much consistency as possible in the awarding of grades. That is why we have been working with exam boards to ensure that there is random sampling across schools and colleges across the country—both state schools and private schools—as well as ensuring that where there are clear anomalies and uncertainty, there are proper checks to ensure that there is no malpractice within the system.