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Government must provide more clarity over return to school, says council chief

A council leader says the Government needs to provide more clarity over a return to school for pupils next week, as Covid cases in the city continue to surge.

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Dr Justin Varney, director of public health, and Birmingham City Council leader Ian Ward

Birmingham, as well as the Black Country and Staffordshire, entered Tier 4 restrictions this week after it was revealed that the number of positive cases in the city has passed 300 per 100,000 for the first time since the first wave.

During a specially-called regional briefing held by the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) this week, several medical experts spoke of their concerns for the coming weeks, with the impact of the easing of restrictions over Christmas not yet showing up on the statistics.

When asked whether delaying the reopening of schools could be an option to help slow rising levels, Councillor Ian Ward, Birmingham City Council's leader, said the Government must provide more clarity in the coming days.

“With regard to schools and whether the government should re-examine their advice, I think what’s needed from the government is some clarity and some timely guidance to be issued,” he said.

“It’s not been a great story over the last few weeks as far as the government and schools are concerned. First of all secondary schools were told the day before they broke up for Christmas to make arrangement to test five million pupils in the first week of term, that was clearly never going to be possible to be organised over the holiday period.

"Less than a fortnight ago Mr Williamson was threatening legal action against schools who tried to move to online learning for safety reasons toward the end of last term. Now we have this advice that there’ll be a staggered return of schools by government.

“So I think we need to end this confusion that’s coming out of government and we need some clarity.

"In fact I agree with Paul Whiteman of the National Association of Headteachers who said that this is another last minute mess that could have been avoided if the Government had listened to school leaders before the holiday period.

“They also need to be talking to local authorities, which they are not doing at the moment.”

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