Secondary schools in England will not open to most pupils until middle of January, Gavin Williamson announces

Hundreds of thousands of pupils are to have their return to school delayed as ministers battle to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control. 

Secondary schools in England will not open to most pupils until the middle of January, a week later than previously planned. 

In a move that will place pressure on many parents, schools in Covid “hotspots” are also set to remain closed indefinitely, as minsters introduce a new “Tier 5” in all but name.   

Primary schools in swathes of London and the southeast, where infection rates are highest, will not open on Monday as planned. 

Ministers have not set a date for when pupils will be back in their classrooms. Instead, the situation will be reviewed when ministers look again at England’s tier system.

It is understood that in Covid hotspots the planned January 18 reopening of secondary schools could also be delayed even further. 

At a press conference in Downing Street Boris Johnson warned that it “may be necessary to take further action” on schools in areas where case rates are high.  

As families scrambled to rearrange their plans, Labour called on the government to apologise for announcing the U-turn at the 11th hour. 

Mr Williamson had earlier defended the late change of policy, which came just weeks after his department threatened councils who wanted to shut schools early for the Christmas holidays with legal action, saying ministers “must always act swiftly when circumstances change”. 

But the list of “hotspot” areas raised eyebrows when it emerged it did not include those London councils who wanted to close schools last month. 

Richard Watts, the leader of one of them, Islington Council, told The Independent it would be asking the Department for Education for an explanation. 
 

“It does seem incredibly random and as if names have just been pulled out of a hat,” he said.  

As ministers desperately try to quell the latest wave of the pandemic, Mr Williamson said secondary schools would have to carry out mass testing for Covid-19 when they do reopen. 

Pupils in exam years will be allowed to return to secondary schools in England from 11 January.  

Other year groups will not be back in the classroom full time until 18 January, however. 

Universities have also been told to cut the number of students returning to campus this month, focusing initially on those whose degrees require practical learning. 

Institutions should also offer two rapid coronavirus tests to each returning student.

The announcement came less than an hour after health secretary Matt Hancock told MPs that three-quarters of the country would be placed under the tightest coronavirus restrictions from midnight tonight. 

Mr Williamson had led the charge within government for schools to remain open.

But he told MPs that the country was facing a “rapidly shifting situation”. 

The closure of primary schools was a “last resort”, he said, but one that was necessary.  

But he added that the overwhelming majority of primary schools will open as planned on Monday.  

Labour’s shadow education secretary Kate Green accused the government of disrupting the education of many by announcing the change just days before pupils were due back in the classroom. 

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT),  said: "This is another last-minute mess which could so easily have been avoided if the government had listened to school leaders before the holidays. Instead, back then, schools which wanted to shift to remote learning were threatened with legal action. Now we have a situation where the government is instructing schools to reduce the amount of teaching time available.

“If we’d had the freedom to take action before the holidays, we might have been in a position to have more schools open for more pupils. School leaders will be baffled, frustrated and justifiably angry tonight.”