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The Department for Education and Public Health England have issued updated guidance for education settings on COVID-19. This guidance will assist staff in addressing COVID-19 in educational settings. This includes childcare, schools, further and higher educational institutions.
What you need to know:
- staff, young people and children should stay at home if they are unwell with a new, continuous cough or a high temperature to avoid spreading infection to others. Otherwise they should attend education or work as normal
- if staff, young people or children become unwell on site with a new, continuous cough or a high temperature they should be sent home
- clean and disinfect regularly touched objects and surfaces more often than usual using your standard cleaning products
- supervise young children to ensure they wash their hands for 20 seconds more often than usual with soap and water or hand sanitiser and catch coughs and sneezes in tissues
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The updated guidance can be found here:
Current advice remains in place: no education or children’s social care setting should close in response to a suspected or confirmed COVID-19 case unless advised to do so by Public Health England.
The Chief Medical Officer has advised that the impact of closing schools on both children’s education and on the workforce would be substantial, but the benefit to public health may not be. Decisions on future advice to education or children’s social care settings will be taken based on the latest and best scientific evidence, which at this stage suggests children are a lower risk group.
This is your daily email to keep you updated on the government’s response to COVID-19 (Coronavirus).
Government Coronavirus action plan
Yesterday, the Coronavirus action plan was launched. This document sets out what the UK as a whole has done to tackle the Coronavirus (COVID-19), and what it plans to do next.
The action plan can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-action-plan
The document includes:
- what we know about the virus and the disease it causes
- how we have planned for an infectious disease outbreak, such as the current coronavirus outbreak
- the actions we have taken so far in response to the current coronavirus outbreak
- what we are planning to do next, depending upon the course the current coronavirus outbreak takes
- the role the public can play in supporting this response, now and in the future
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Current advice remains in place: No school should close in response to a suspected (or confirmed) COVID-19 case unless advised to do so by Public Health England.
The importance of hygiene
Personal hygiene is the most important way we can tackle COVID-19, especially washing hands more; and the catch it, bin it, kill it strategy for those with coughs and sneezes.
Please help us in sharing simple and effective hand hygiene messages.
https://twitter.com/NHSuk/status/1235112744917049346
Public Health England has a dedicated webpage with a range of posters and digital materials at:
https://campaignresources.phe.gov.uk/resources/campaigns/101-coronavirus-/resources
Sign up is quick, free and means you will be alerted as more resources are made available.
Department for Education Coronavirus helpline
On Monday we launched a new helpline to answer questions about COVID-19 related to education. Staff, parents and young people can contact the helpline as follows:
Phone: 0800 046 8687
Email: DfE.coronavirushelpline@education.gov.uk
Opening hours: 8am to 6pm (Monday to Friday)
Where to find the latest information
Updates on COVID-19:
Guidance for educational settings:
Travel advice for those travelling and living overseas:
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