Chris Green MP: Evidence shows schools can safely reopen

Schools and education have returned to the top of the political agenda and, as always these days, many of the concerns are Covid-19 related. The worries go right from when children will start their first day in school to the exams results that they receive after their final day.

How you start and how you finish school are just as important as each other and set the course for so many successes later in life. At the moment, there is a determination that schools should be fully reopened at the beginning of September.

At the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis and the associated lockdown of so much of our society, we knew little about the disease, how it was transmitted and just how infectious it is. We have learnt so much since then and so we should apply that new understanding to how we now return to normality. The international evidence is that it is safe for schools to reopen and all children to return.

Many children will not have had much education for nearly six months and 2.3 million have, according to a report from University College London, received less than an hour a day during this time.

Shockingly, 40 per cent of pupils have not been in regular contact with teachers.

This cannot drag on and the science says that it does not have to.

Obviously, the Prime Minister has long been supporting a full return to school and it is an immense step forward that the Leader of the Opposition is now saying that it is a “moral duty” that schools reopen.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Sir Keir said: “I don’t just want all children back at school next month, I expect them back at school. No ifs, no buts, no equivocation”. This is, I believe, a marked shift from the approach of Sir Keir’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, would have taken.

It almost feels Blairite in its Education Education Education tone.

Obviously, I will not expect Sir Keir Starmer to stand in solidarity with Boris Johnson on every issue but, in his writing for the Daily Mail, he is right to support the education and opportunity for the next generation.

I do not believe that one size fits all in education as all children are different and nor do I believe it is right in terms of how we deal with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Each area has been affected differently and, since our understanding of the science has advanced so much, each area should now have the lockdown measures that suits the local situation.

Frustratingly, due to devolution our part of Lancashire is being treated as part of Greater Manchester and is therefore having a more extreme lockdown than St Helens or Warrington even though they have worse rates of coronavirus transmission.

I always opposed George Osborne’s imposition of the mayoral system because I always thought that, where we have common areas of interest, we can work together without another expensive political job.

Now that we have a Mayor for Manchester, I believe too many judgements are made with a one size fits all approach even when common sense says otherwise.

Right from the beginning, I have said that Wigan, with its low level of Covid-19 transmission which has gone down to 7.3 per 100,000, should not be part of the GM lockdown just because Oldham has extreme problems of household transmission.

I am still putting pressure on ministers to get this fixed and for them to introduce a localised system as soon as possible.

As other parts of the country are seeing a return to business as usual – even something as simple as the re-opening of bowling alleys and soft play centres – it is time for Wigan to be re-opened, too.