From the end of Friday schools will be closing for all children – with the exception of the children of key workers and vulnerable children.
So far the advice has been that we should keep schools open to reduce the pressure on the NHS and on other public services. But this has always been a balanced judgement and kept under constant review.
Based on the latest advice, we will now close schools for the vast majority of pupils until further notice. In order to allow health and other critical workers to continue working, their children, and those who are vulnerable, will continue to attend school.
Closing schools for the vast majority will help in our efforts to suppress the upward trend of the virus while continuing to look after the children of key workers will be a critical part of our fightback against coronavirus.
We are doing this by:
Closing schools for the vast majority of children until further notice. This will mean there will be far fewer children in schools and that will help us to slow the spread of the disease. •
Continuing to provide school places for the children of key workers to ensure our NHS and vital services continue to have the workforces they need. We need health workers and other critical workers – from police officers to supermarket delivery drivers– to keep going to work. So schools are being asked to make provision for the children of these people. These measures are crucial to make sure the critical parts of the economy keep functioning and public services keep functioning.
A full list of key workers can be found here.