A poll of 1000 parents commissioned by the National Education Union has found that 33% of parents do not immediately plan to send their children back to school once measures are relaxed.

The poll was undertaken before the Government produced its road map for coming out of the lockdown which includes plans for primary school to return to classrooms by June.

There was strong support for safety measures which have not yet been met by Government, including widespread testing and tracing, before schools re-open.

Parents wanted the Covid-19 new case count to be much lower than it is now, with a sustained downward trend,extensive arrangements for testing and contact tracing to be in place and Scientific or medical evidence to show that it is safe for children to return to school.

Two thirds of parents also wanted testing for all children and staff at their child’s school to be conducted .

Commenting on the findings of the poll, Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said:

“With an aspiration to open schools more widely in less than three weeks from now, the Prime Minister is squandering a great deal of parental goodwill.

“The NEU has supported the lockdown, but the past few days have revealed the Government’s garbled approach to the next phase. In his haste to use schools as a symbol of recovery, the Prime Minister has merely succeeded in revealing the incoherence at the heart of his strategy. His ‘sketch’ must be redrawn.

“Now that the Prime Minister has set himself on a course out of lockdown, he needs to act fast to reassure unions, school staff and parents that when schools do open it will only be when our shared and widespread concerns for personal safety are fully met.”

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