Week by week: Pupils and staff self-isolating in Blackburn with Darwen schools

The number of times children were sent home to self-isolate since October was 4,994. In addition to this, staff were sent home on 405 occasions in Blackburn with Darwen between September 3 and October 16. 

Week six — October 3 to 9 — saw the highest rate of pupils and staff self-isolating. During that week, 1,219 pupils and 150 staff were told to stay at home. The numbers then dropped with 64 staff and 885 pupils self-isolating during week seven. However, some of these figures could show pupils and staff going into self-isolation more than once during that period.

These figures relate to 47 schools in the borough and only includes maintained schools, academies and free schools. The figures do not include pre-schools, private schools, private faith schools, voluntary aided schools and FE establishments as the council does not receive information for these settings.

A total of 27,490 pupils attend both primary and secondary schools in Blackburn with Darwen. This number does not include nurseries.

A Department for Education’s survey of school attendance showed 18,084 pupils were absent from Lancashire schools on October 15 – with an overall attendance rate of 86 per cent. The survey only looked at state-funded schools, of which 73 per cent responded, so it is likely even more pupils were off throughout the area. 

The DfE said up to 412,000 children across the UK did not attend school for Covid-19 related reasons, with the majority self-isolating due to potential contact with a case of coronavirus. 

In Lancashire, 84 per cent of secondary pupils were in class on October 15. This was higher than the average across the North West, at 81 per cent, which was the joint-lowest in England.

Councillor Julie Gunn, Executive Member for Children, Young People and Education, said: “Our priority is always the wellbeing and safety of all our pupils and staff and this is more important than ever as we battle this public health crisis. We are supporting the schools during these challenging and unprecedented times in the best way we can.

“We continue to respond to the demands of managing Covid safely and sensibly and our schools are working incredibly hard in a difficult situation. Our situation has not been helped by the timing of the announcement, late on Friday before half term, that the eligibility criteria for laptops has changed and so the numbers allocated to children in Blackburn with Darwen has reduced significantly.

"Children from many of our schools will be disadvantaged by this and this is not acceptable. We originally had 23 schools allocated 516 laptops but under the new criteria, allocation is 104 so there has been a reduction of 412.

“This announcement was made the day after schools were told that they have a legal duty to provide remote learning for self-isolating pupils.

"We know that our schools have been doing this all along and trying to maintain close links with pupils so that the impact on their education is kept to a minimum.  But to withdraw the capacity to do this within days of formalising the responsibility is shameful.

“We continue to work with Public Health to ensure that schools remain safely open and respond to situation as flexibly as we can, given the government guidelines, and this will continue for as long as is necessary."

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of NAHT school leaders’ union said: “The rushed, last-minute nature of the lockdown announcement on Saturday will not have done anything to inspire public confidence.

“Families will be left wondering about the safety of their children and relatives, and we could see attendance figures drop when term restarts as families are left guessing about what is safe and what isn’t.

“We have already recommended that the Government removes the threat of attendance fines for families this term. Now we are heading back into lockdown rather than out of it, as many of us had hoped by now, the Government absolutely must take fines off the table.

 “We want to see young people facing the minimum amount of disruption to their education as possible, so keeping schools open is the priority, but this must be done in a safe way. 

“Additional measures will almost certainly be needed to ensure this so we are asking for an urgent review of the current guidance.”

A DfE spokeswoman said: “The chief and deputy chief medical officers have highlighted the risks of not being in education on their development and mental health. Schools should work with families to ensure children are attending full-time. As usual, fines will sit alongside this, but only as a last resort.”