Sheffield teaching union urges city council to defy Government's school reopening plan

Sheffield’s National Education Union (NEU) are calling on the council to go against the Prime Minister’s lockdown easing plans and not reopen primary schools from the start of June.

The teaching union are instead urging Sheffield City Council to follow the likes of Liverpool and Hartlepool councils, who have announced they will not be opening schools in the region until mid June at the earliest – defying the government’s plans.

The city’s NEU branch are encouraging the local authority to resist allowing schools to open their doors more widely until effective social distancing measures can be put in place to protect pupils and staff.

It’s after the government laid out their road-map for exiting lockdown which included a phased return to school from June 1 for pupils in Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 if the rate of infections remained low.

Sheffield’s NEU are urging parents and teachers to write an open letter to councillors, asking them to stand against the government’s planned re-opening of schools next month.

The union fears there are “unreasonable demands” on schools to be ready by June which could put children, teachers and their families “at much greater risk”.

Joint branch secretary at NEU Sheffield Simon Murch said: “I am worried that the Government is trying to shift the responsibility for safety in schools and community health, during a health pandemic, onto individual headteachers without a safe national framework.

“The Government is showing a lack of understanding about the dangers of the spread of coronavirus within schools, and outwards from schools to parents, siblings and relatives, and to the wider community.

“The position of the teaching unions seems to have been grossly misrepresented in much of the media.

“Our members want to open schools more widely, but it needs to be done in a measured and carefully planned manner.

“The danger in schools is not so much children becoming unwell as the virus being shared and spread back into the community.”