Parents Told to Send Sniffling Children to School and Ignore Old Covid Advice

Parents are being urged to ignore old guidance around COVID-19 and to send their children to school when they have mild colds and sore throats as part of a new campaign to drive up attendance. Following increased rates of persistent absenteeism after the lockdowns, when the majority of children had to stay at home and were expected to learn online, the Department for Education has launched a national communications campaign under the strapline “Moments Matter, Attendance Counts.” Statistics show the number of secondary school children persistently absent in England has doubled in the past decade from 567,000 in 2010 to 894,444 in 2021. The latest government strategy republishes a recent letter from Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty, acknowledging that some parents have been more likely to keep their children off school with minor ailments since the lockdowns and the ever-changing government guidelines around the virus....