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Face masks are “not necessary” for staff and pupils when schools in England reopen next month, an education minister has said.
Nick Gibb said as long as schools put in place the hygiene measures outlined in government guidance in early July, face coverings will not be required to stop the spread of coronavirus.
Face masks are currently compulsory on public transport and in shops and other settings.
But the schools minister was backed by child health professor Calum Semple, who sits on the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), who said the evidence for wearing masks in school was “fairly weak”.
Semple said there was more of a risk from parents meeting at the school gates, or going for a coffee after dropping their children off, and urged them to follow social distancing rules.
The pair spoke as Boris Johnson returned to work from his holiday in Scotland with a plea to parents to send their children back to the classroom when schools reopen in September, having been largely closed since March because of the pandemic.
Asked whether children, teachers and staff should wear face masks on their return, Gibb told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We are always led by the scientific advice and what the current advice is - if the school puts in place the measures that are in the guidance we issued in early July, all the hygiene measures I talked about, then masks are not necessary for staff and pupils.”
Put to him that Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon was considering whether to change the guidance north of the border, Gibb said: “We always listen to whatever the current advice is from Public Health England, the chief medical officers, we have always adhered to that advice and it’s that advice that drives the content of the guidance that we give to schools.”
Semple meanwhile said the evidence for wearing masks in school was “fairly weak”, instead stressing the importance of “handwashing and good respiratory hygiene, using tissues and quite possibly sneezing into your elbow and armpit”.
He went on: “Masks are a good way of stopping the virus being transmitted but here’s where we differ a little bit in view from the WHO (World Health Organisation), because we think, based on quite good evidence now, that children transmit if anything less than adults and so we’re quite confident the children don’t need to wear face masks or visors while they are in the classroom, because other measures have been taken.”
He added: “We are not absolutely sure, we know that they carry roughly the same virus as adults do but because they are not coughing and snotting, because they are not unwell with the virus, on the whole they do not tend to transmit.”
Semple highlighted a Public Health England study which suggested “very few” school outbreaks can be attributed to children, stressing that staff members are usually at higher risk of transmitting the disease.
He said groups gathering at school gates could pose more of a risk of transmission than children in the classroom.
“That’s where the risks lie, it’s the parents at the school gates or the parents who go for a coffee with each other after dropping their kids at the school gates, that’s probably more of a risk than the children in the classroom, so they need to be maintaining their social distancing and not keeping their guard down.”
Teachers meanwhile are not being advised to wear masks as it could harm “effective communication” with their pupils, Semple said.