Mass Covid testing for teachers and support staff in primary schools is to be rolled out from next week, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has revealed.
Primary school staff will be able to self-administer the tests at home, with the Government providing a £78 million support package to help with the rollout.
The mass rollout of Covid testing for primary school teachers and support staff will begin from 18 January.
Gavin Williamson told a parliamentary select committee that he would eventually like to see mass testing be rolled out “across all education settings”.
The Education Secretary said: “Testing is a really important part of bringing people back into school. It’s an important part of fighting Covid right across the community.
Will Primary school children be tested?
Although primary school teachers and staff will soon be able to test themselves for Covid at home, Mr Williamson said it was “not appropriate or right” to ask staff to test pupils for the virus.
In secondary schools, the mass testing of staff and pupils began being rolled out in England last week.
The Government is now considering a system which would see parents carry out Covid tests on primary school-aged children from home.
“If we’re testing a child, in essence we’re in a position where we’re also testing a household as well, “ Mr Williamson said.
“We’re extending staff testing as of next week to primary schools and I would like to see it rolled out to all pupils, that’s my ambition – that’s where I want us to get to,” Mr Williamson said.
Susan Acland-Hood, permanent secretary at the Department for Education (DfE), welcomed this consideration.
Ms Acland-Hood told the committee: “Getting to the point where parents can administer the tests at home unlocks the ability to do primary testing on a much greater scale in a way that is more straightforward but also more appropriate.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article