Nicola Sturgeon vows Scottish children in low risk areas 'will not be held back from school'

Nicola Sturgeon has reassured parents that she will not maintain an all-Scotland approach to school returns, allowing children in lower-risk areas to go back to the classroom first – despite a senior health advisor claiming that any return would be done on a national level.

Jason Leitch told the Scottish Parliament’s Covid-19 committee on Thursday that youngsters across Scotland would not be able to go back to school until it was safe to do so in every area of Scotland, saying it was “the right thing to do for the wellbeing of children”.

However, Ms Sturgeon countered the claim just hours later, telling the daily coronavirus briefing she did not think holding back children in low-risk areas was fair.

The youngest pupils are going back to school on Monday.

She said: “We have never ruled out the return to school being varied across the country depending on rates of the virus and I am not doing that now. I wouldn’t want to be in a position of holding any children back from school if it was safe for them to be there, just because it wasn't safe for children in other parts of the country.

"It may well be because of the pattern of the virus we see right now, we may see changes happening on a national basis first, it may be a little bit away before we are back into a geographic levels system, but we won’t rule anything out.

"We want to get as many children back to school as quickly as possible and I don’t want to be in a position of saying that nobody can go back until everybody can go back because I don’t think that’s fair to young people.”

In response to questions from MSPs in the Covid-19 committee meeting about whether youngsters in areas with low-virus levels could return to school earlier, Professor Leitch said: “We would much rather do schools nationally if we can. It seems like the right thing to do for the wellbeing of children.”

The Scotsman had revealed parents’ anger at Ms Sturgeon’s comments earlier this week that children returning to school would give the virus a chance to spread more easily as parents would mingle in their free time while their offspring were out of the house.

Ms Sturgeon said in Thursday’s briefing, however, that she does not have specific evidence that parents at school gates are spreading the bug.

She said: “This not about the evidence of particularly, the virus spreading at the school gates. This is evidence of when does the virus spread when people come together.

"Any opportunity that people might be having in the next period that they haven’t had in the past few weeks might, if we are not careful, lead to the virus spreading again. I’m not blaming parents for that, it’s adults coming together.

"What the evidence does tell us is when we have schools back even partially, it’s not so much the transmission in schools that leads to greater case numbers, it is what goes around that.”

The youngest children in P1 to P3 across Scotland are due to start school on Monday.

However, a date has not yet been given for other pupils to return to the classroom. Schools have been closed since the Christmas holidays began in December.

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