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A principal will begin next week imposing fines on cautious parents who refuse to send their children back to classrooms.
Tina Wilkinson revealed that 25 pupils were absent from St Andrew Primary School in Lancashire yesterday, despite their repeated sanction warnings.
Ms. Wilkinson told MailOnline that her school has a historical problem with attendance and has applied a zero tolerance approach even if it ‘doesn’t make me popular’.
The fines are imposed after five days of absence, meaning their parents have until Tuesday to send their children to classes, enroll in homeschool or face the high charges.
While she said she doesn’t particularly agree with the concept of fines, the 17-year-old director acknowledged that they are effective.
She insisted that strong measures had been put in place to make classrooms safe for Covid, but was sympathetic to the fears weighing on parents.
As millions of pupils in England and Wales return to school this week, some parents remain nervous about the virus and have chosen to homeschool their children.
Kerrie Stanford, a Suffolk mother of two, revealed today that she planned to educate her children from home for the next two years as she was terrified of becoming ill with the virus.
Children can generally only be absent if they are ill or have prior permission from the principal, and Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has said fines will be imposed as a “last resort.”
Parents whose children are marked with an unauthorized absence can be fined £ 60, which will double to £ 120 if not paid within three weeks, with the threat of prosecution if the charges are continuously avoided.
Parents have the right to homeschool their children, but must communicate this wish to the local authority to remove them from the school record.
But Ms. Wilkinson said her school had parents who wanted their children to remain registered and that they still had them at home.
She told ITV’s This Morning: ‘From our point of view, we have an attendance problem, a lot of the kids don’t come to school regularly and on time and that’s not fair to us and the teachers when we are trying to do things.
And while I wouldn’t say I particularly agree with fines, it works and it’s a choice, one or the other. It can’t be something in between. ‘
He stressed that efforts have been intensified to protect his students from the risk of contamination, including hand washing stations, pedal buckets, giving children their own backpacks, and getting rid of school assemblies.
Teachers across the country have taken similar steps to make schools Covid-safe, as millions of pupils in England returned this week.
Tina Wilkinson revealed that 25 students were absent from St Andrew’s Primary School in Lancashire yesterday, despite their repeated sanction warnings.
However, Ms Stanford, a mother of two, remains unconvinced of the safety standards and plans to homeschool her children for two years.
He has also banned sons Zac, nine, and Danny, seven, from meeting their friends, except via Xbox or Zoom.
She told this morning: ‘If we have to isolate ourselves, our finances will stagnate and we will lose everything.
Obviously that’s part of it, none of us want to get sick anyway … perfectly healthy people are suffering with prolonged Covid and it’s just not a risk we want to take.
She added: ‘We are not completely isolated, we go for walks regularly, they are not (seeing their friends) and they do talk via Xbox and Zoom calls and if the numbers go down they can see their friends during the weekend. week’. If we keep our distance
“The reason I don’t take that risk is that every day we learn new things about it and we just don’t know enough.
“We don’t know what will happen when they are all together again and get back together.”
To the surprise of many This Morning viewers, the mother said she planned to homeschool her children for two years.
She added: ‘We are looking to do this for a couple of years at least, thanks to modern technology the curriculum can be found online.
“I already know from school the subjects they would have been learning and we will use them as our main subjects.”
Millions of children from England and Wales are going back to school this week, following the return to lessons of pupils from Scotland and Northern Ireland.
As the infection rate accelerated in March, Boris Johnson made the decision to close schools.
Sending students back to school became a “national priority” for the government when the pandemic began to wane and the country emerged from the blockade.
Suffolk’s Kerrie Stanford has also banned sons Zac, nine, and Danny, seven, from meeting their friends except via Xbox or Zoom.
But the ministers faced constant obstacles, including opposition from some heads of teachers’ unions who urged their members not to return to work.
In August, a survey by the Office for National Statistics showed that two-thirds of parents were nervous about sending their children to school while Covid-19 was present.
Ministers made repeated assurances about the safety of the children, but the government’s confidence wavered in the wake of the exam fiasco.
As parental fears threatened to ruin the return to school, England’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, made a rare appearance on a broadcast to allay concerns.
He stressed that the chances of children contracting the coronavirus in schools were minimal and, for elementary school students, the risk was lower in classrooms.
He added that the long-term damage from the missed lessons far outweighed any tangible health risks.
Schools have been working over the summer to make their classrooms Covid-safe and enforce social distancing.
After an escalation of government, directors also have the discretion to require that they cover their faces, although this is not required.
