Trade union warns of Covid impact on Lincolnshire teachers as public health bosses seek to calm fears

Chris Thompson, president of the Lincolnshire branch of the National Education Union, said teachers were starting to get overwhelmed by the pressure.

The county currently has more than 90 schools affected by coronavirus with at least seven temporarily closed.

Mr Thompson said: “They’re struggling with the work load, they’re struggling with the level of anxiety. Many teachers feel they’ve worked solidly since March. The stresses and strains are beginning to show.”

But Tony McGinty, assistant director of public health at Lincolnshire County Council, insists the county is “doing really quite a good job” at managing the situation.

He again emphasised the need to balance the loss of education and risk to workforces due to school children being off, and the impact of COVID-19 on teachers and students.

Mr McGinty said: “I think for Lincolnshire still the balance is in favour of keeping schools open and the reason I say that is because I think education is really important, and the ability of parents to go out to work is also really important for all of us.

However, he added: “I completely understand why teachers would be worried and are wondering about that benefit versus risk analysis, but the vast majority of schools now have got really good plans for keeping everybody safe. It’s really important that you maintain that as much as you can.”

Mr McGinty went one to explain how the schools and health bosses were isolating pupils without needing to close schools down.

While he acknowledged the half-term holiday saw infections numbers “dip off” a bit, authorities believe there is now so much general community infection that it “did not hold for long”.

He said “What we’re finding is we’re able to send a bubble or a year group, or a football team off into isolation and away from school for a period of time rather than sending the whole school, off and that seems to be working where we’re seeing that that’s stopping ongoing spread inside schools that have had cases.”