Unions campaign for schools
'Protect Pupils - Protect Education' Online Day of Action on 9 December.
UNISON, GMB, NASUWT and Unite the Union are joining parents and staff in an online day of action on Thursday 9th December. This is to tell the government to bring in additional mitigations to help keep pupils in England safely in school.
Covid-19 is disrupting the education of many children; and there are now concerns about the Omicron Variant. Currently:
- School-aged children have the highest rates of infection of any age group.
- The hospital admission rate among 5 to 14 year olds remains higher than the mid-January 2021 peak.
- 77,000 children aged 2 to 16 are reported to be suffering long COVID.
- Education staff are more likely to test positive for Covid than the general population leading to unsustainable workload pressures and burnout.
200,000 pupils were absent for COVID-19 related reasons on 25 November alone according to the Department for Education; with warnings that it could get much worse in January. This cannot be allowed to continue.
The unions accept that many councils are doing everything they can but are being let down by the lack of support and clear guidance from government. They hope everyone will join them in calling on government to do much more to protect pupils, staff and schools; the level of educational disruption and ill-health cannot be allowed to continue.
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