Schools ‘likely’ to stay shut after the February half term, says senior Tory Robert Halfon

A senior Tory has thrown fresh doubt on whether schools will reopen after the February half term, saying he expected it would be “much longer”.

Robert Halfon, chairman of the education select committee, said he believed it was not “very likely” that schools would reopen when the Government had hoped.

Mr Halfon told the BBC’s Today programme on Friday: “I don’t think it’s very likely they [schools] are going to open very sadly in half term as has been suggested. I think it will be much longer before they are open.”

Earlier this week Boris Johnson warned it was “too early to tell” if schools can reopen after half term.

Asked during the liaison committee if schools would reopen next month, he replied: “The priority is obviously to get schools open as soon as possible, whether we can do that after the half term break in the middle of February ... depends on a number of things — the success of the vaccination programme, it depends on us not finding that for instance the South African or Brazilian variant are immune resistant.”

He said they had seen some early signs of progress in restraining the virus, but warned it was “far too early for us to say that this means that we can go into any kind of relaxation in February”.

Read More

30% of Londoners ‘have already had Covid’ as capital ‘passes peak’