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UK coronavirus live: Boris Johnson urges parents to send children back to school in September






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Secondary school pupils in Scotland expected to be told to wear face coverings

Scottish secondary pupils are expected to be told to wear face coverings in corridors and public spaces at school after the World Health Organization updated its advice, Nicola Sturgeon has announced.

First minister Nicola Sturgeon.

Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA

The first minister said John Swinney, the education secretary, was consulting with local councils and union leaders on the change after the WHO recommended three days ago pupils over 12 use face coverings in schools where physical distancing is not possible.

Several high schools in Scotland have already implemented those measures, including James Gillespie’s in Edinburgh, Grantown grammar school in Grantown-on-Spey and Millburn academy in Inverness, after experiencing over-crowding in corridors and circulation areas.

The EIS, Scotland’s largest teachers union, said it would press ministers to adopt the WHO’s new guidance after schools across the country found it extremely hard to maintain physical distancing while pupils moved between classes or at break times and lunch time.

Grantown told parents over the weekend face coverings would be required from the start of school on Monday. Its Facebook page said: “Don’t forget to bring your face masks to school tomorrow! Pupils and staff need to wear them in the corridors when moving between classes and in the canteen.”

The new measures follow an upsurge of cases involving Scottish schools and nurseries after they reopened earlier in August, including one cluster affecting 17 staff at a special school in Dundee. A nursery attached to Newburgh primary school in Fife was closed down after a child there fell ill with Covid-19.

Sturgeon denied she had ever said there was no risk of Covid-19 transmission within schools and conceded the Kingspark school cluster could show it was an issue. She said the greatest risk for schools was transmission in the wider community. Even so “we must have the right mitigations in schools to keep the risk of transmission as low as possible”, she said.

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