Simon Clarke say schools will fully reopen in Autumn and it's 'not up for debate'

Downing Street today doubled down on its insistence that all schools will reopen in September, despite concerns it could fuel a second wave of coronavirus.

This morning, Local Government minister Simon Clarke stressed that whatever the challenges, all schools will reopen fully as planned.

“One thing is clear, schools are going reopen in full in the Autumn – that is not up for debate,” he told Sky News.

His comments came after a new study suggested current testing and contact tracing systems need substantial scaling up to enable kids and teachers to return safely to the classroom.

“There’s nothing gung-ho about getting schools back," Mr Clarke insisted.

"There is little doubt about the major damage that it does to children’s education not to be in school.

"We’ve lost half a year now to this virus … and it’s disrupted every child’s education.

"It is an absolute priority that we get on with this – it is a basic matter of social justice," he added.

"There is a generation of children whose performance will be inhibited throughout the rest of their time in education unless we get this right and we’re confident that we can.”

The minister was responding to research, published on Tuesday, which implied that test-and-trace systems aren't yet effective enough to prevent a second wave of Covid-19 later in the year.

The authors found that “with increased levels of testing… and effective contact tracing and isolation, an epidemic rebound might be prevented”.

But they found that the current testing system only has “about 50 per cent coverage”.

Mr Clarke refuted any suggestion that the NHS Test and Trace programme was falling short, however.

He said it was “delivering” and “keeping people safer” but conceded that more work needed to be done to improve its reach.

“I think it’s obviously vital that we always continue to keep up the progress that we’re making with test and trace, which is a massive national undertaking and it is working, I really would emphasise that," he said.

“184,000 people so far have been contacted by the programme, either who’ve tested positive or their contacts, and those people have all been allowed to self isolate, removed from the community at a time when they could be at risk of spreading the virus," he said.

“That’s obviously a massive success, we reach over 80 per cent of positive test results and contact over 75 per cent of their close contacts, so this is a programme which is delivering and which is helping to keep us all safer."

In the new study, researchers from UCL and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) simulated what would happen in an “optimistic” scenario assuming 68 per cent of contacts of people who tested positive could be traced.

In the more pessimistic scenario the system had 40 per cent coverage.

In the worst-case scenario, a second coronavirus wave in the winter could be 2.3 times worse than the first, they found.

The authors said that without appropriate levels of testing and contact tracing, reopening of schools together with gradual relaxing of the lockdown measures are “likely to induce a second wave that would peak in December 2020 if schools open full-time in September”.

But Dr Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths, senior research fellow and lecturer in mathematical modelling at UCL, added: “Our result show that reopening schools fully in September will not lead to a second wave if accompanied by a comprehensive test, trace and isolate strategy.”

A Government spokesman responded to the study saying: “Plans have been put in place to ensure schools can re-open safely.

"Local health officials, using the latest data, will able to determine the best action to take to help curb the spread of the virus should there be a rise in cases.”

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