Speaking to the House of Commons the Prime Minister told MPs that children will not return to the classroom after the February half-term.
Boris Johnson is hopeful that it could be safe to reopen schools across England on 8 March, but said Ministers, “do not yet have enough data to know exactly how soon it will be safe to reopen our society and economy.”
Johnson told MPs, “The first sign of normality beginning to return should be pupils going back to their classrooms.
“I know how parents and teachers need as much certainty as possible, including two weeks’ notice of the return of face-to-face teaching.
“So I must inform the House that for the reasons I have outlined it will not be possible to reopen schools immediately after the February half-term.”
The Prime Minister said he knows “how frustrating that will be for pupils and teachers who want nothing more than to get back to the classroom.”
He also acknowledged that parents and carers have “spent so many months juggling their day jobs” with home schooling and the “myriad other demands of their children.”
He also has promised a “programme of catch up” with summer schools helping to mitigate remote learning.
Johnson admitted that the country is in a “perilous situation” and things should be more clearer by February.
He said, “By then we will know much more about the effect of vaccines in preventing hospitalisations and deaths.”
Johnson warned that now is the time to “hold our nerve in the end game of the battle against the virus”.
“Our goal now must be to buy the extra weeks we need to immunise the most vulnerable and get this virus under control so that together we can defeat this most wretched disease, reclaim our lives once and for all.”
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