Home
Third of parents ‘would delay pupils’ return to school’

Third of parents ‘would delay pupils’ return to school’

Poll findings come as government plans for primary across certain year groups to return after half term

12th May 2020, 11:30am

Coronavirus School Closures: What Are The Rights Of Teacher Who Are Parents?

A third of parents do not immediately plan to send their children back to school once lockdown measures are relaxed, according to survey findings released today.

The figures have been published after the government yesterday announced plans for pupils in certain years groups to return to primary schools from 1 June.

The poll of more than 1,000 parents, commissioned by the NEU teaching union, shows that nearly half (49 per cent) said they would send their children back to school “as soon as it reopens, but a further 33 per cent said they were “intending to delay the return”

The poll of 1,074 parents of school-age children in England was carried out between 5 and 7 May, before the new lockdown measures were announced.

Read: Parents demand choice on sending children to school

DfE: Teachers to go in without PPE or social distancing

Revealed: DfE safety measures for re-opened schools

Mary Bousted, NEU joint-general secretary, said: “With an aspiration to open schools more widely in less than three weeks from now, the prime minister is squandering a great deal of parental goodwill.

“In his haste to use schools as a symbol of recovery, the prime minister has merely succeeded in revealing the incoherence at the heart of his strategy. His ‘sketch’ must be redrawn.”

Hundreds of thousands of parents have signed a petition arguing they should be given a choice over whether to send their children back to school if they reopen more widely in June. And the government said last night parents will not be fined if they keep children off school.

Other findings of the poll were:

86 per cent of parents were in favour of school closures which have been in place since March.
More than four-fifths (81 per cent) were in favour of keeping schools open to disadvantaged children.
Four-fifths wanted Ofsted inspections to be suspended.
Nearly two-thirds (65 per cent) supported the cancelling of GCSE and A-level exams.
92 per cent of parents agreed that the closure of schools has been an important factor in containing coronavirus.
90 per cent of those polled have kept their child at home in light of lockdown requirements - the remainder being key workers or parents of a child with vulnerability needs.