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Covid: Preventing a chaotic autumn term...

Schools are braced for an ‘exponential increase’ in Covid infections and yet the government contingency strategy remains thin. Geoff Barton offers three suggestions that could pull us back from the brink...


There has been a huge amount of commentary and speculation about the return of pupils to school in the autumn term. Understandably, this has focused on whether we will see more disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic over the course of the next few weeks and months, and whether the new – and far less stringent control measures – set out by the government (DfE, 2021a) are up to the job of keeping the impact of the virus under control.

It is fair to say that the jury is out on both these important questions. However, scientists on the modelling group of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies provided a worrying prognosis in a document published at the end of August (SAGE, 2021; see also SecEd, 2021) concluding that it is highly like that high prevalence of the virus will be seen within schools by the end of September.

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