Headteachers could be SUED for 'irrationally' forcing pupils to wear face masks - Money

Headteachers could be sued for ‘irrationally’ forcing pupils to wear face masks when schools reopen fully in September.

The policy could be challenged with a judicial review for being ‘manifestly absurd’, a law firm said today, while a parents’ campaign vowed to join any legal action.

At least ten schools in England have decided to flout government guidance by requiring pupils to wear masks, despite warnings they would offer little protection.

A law firm today said it could apply for a judicial review if pupils were forced to wear face masks in the UK. Pictured is a school in Brussels in May

Education unions are also backing masks, insisting that laws to make them compulsory in shops last week should be extended to schools.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said last week that masks would not be recommended in schools because ‘if you’re in a classroom with kids all day, a mask doesn’t give you protection’.

And today opponents of masks in schools vowed to challenge any attempt to make them.

George McLellan, a public law expert at DLA Piper, told The Daily Telegraph: ‘The primary ground for judicial review would be unreasonableness or irrationality.

‘The concern with masks is that there’s no rational basis for them to be required. There is a lack of proportionality of requiring children in schools to wear masks.’

Meanwhile, Molly Kingsley, co-founder of the parents’ campaign group Us For Them, said her organisation would join with DLA Piper in supporting any parents who wanted to bring a judicial review.

Matt Hancock – pictured last week – is against the compulsory use of masks in schools

While most head teachers are following Government advice that masks are unnecessary and could actually increase transmission of Covid-19 through misuse, at least ten schools have broken ranks to make the coverings either compulsory or ‘strongly encouraged’.

One comprehensive, Holmes Chapel in Cheshire, has even told parents the masks are now part of the school uniform and can be bought for £3 at a designated shop.

Its July newsletter said: ‘The wearing of face coverings will be compulsory for students and staff when inside the school buildings.’

This week the school pledged to ‘review our position regularly’.

All seven schools in the Bohunt multi-academy trust in Hampshire, West Sussex and Berkshire will be ‘strongly encouraged’ to wear masks in classrooms and corridors.

Fallibroome Academy in Macclesfield said it ‘expected’ students to wear masks in corridors. And Brighton College, where boarders pay up to £51,000 a year, has told parents the ‘current expectation’ was that masks would be required when pupils move around the site.

Mask-wearing is one of a raft of Covid-19 policies that may transform life in schools, according to a poll of 550 parents by lobby group UsForThem.

It found that 32 per cent of pupils will not be provided with a hot lunch and 40 per cent of parents said their children would be kept in the same classroom for most of the day and told only to face forward.

Teaching unions have urged ministers to make face masks mandatory for children in secondary schools. Pictured, a schoolchild in France

Co-founder Liz Cole said the group feared masks would ‘severely’ affect communication and ‘impact educational outcomes’.

The Department for Education said today: ‘The system of controls which schools are implementing, including cleaning and hygiene measures, will reduce the risk of transmission of the virus when they reopen in September.

‘NO TEACHERS HAVE CAUGHT COVID FROM PUPILS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD’

There is no proof Covid-19 has been transmitted from a pupil to a teacher in school anywhere in the world, a scientist advising the Government has claimed.

Professor Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist from the University of Edinburgh, said closing all schools completely during Britain’s lockdown might have been a mistake.

Evidence now suggests children are ‘minimally involved’ in the spread of Covid-19, which politicians should bear in mind in the future, he added.

Statistics show 15 children and teenagers have died of coronavirus in England and Wales since March, 0.03 per cent of the total deaths.

And scientists say children appear to only rarely be seriously affected by the condition, which preys on existing ill health and is most dangerous for the elderly. Getting fewer symptoms and milder illness may make them less likely to spread it.

Professor Woolhouse, who sits on a sub-group of SAGE, told The Times it is ‘extremely difficult’ to find any instances of children spreading the virus to adults in schools, with no certain cases.

He suggests closing schools was ‘never essential’ and said it was unlikely that governments would repeat the drastic step.

It is not clear, however, how much children contribute to the spread of the virus in the home, which is where most transmission takes place. Elderly relatives could be at risk from children catching the virus from other families, for example, suggesting keeping youngsters apart at school could still be beneficial.

‘This does not include the wearing of face coverings because the system of controls laid out reduces the risk of transmission for both staff and students.’

Unions claim the rules are ‘out of step’ with the decision to make masks mandatory in shops, supermarkets and train stations, saying teachers aren’t given the same amount of protection as other workers.

Patrick Roach, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) union, told The Telegraph that guidance to other employers recognises that ‘face masks should be worn’ where physical distancing ‘cannot be assured’.

Mr Roach said: ‘Teachers and other staff working in schools also want to be assured that, when they return to the workplace in September, they will be afforded the same level of protection as other workers, and that the guidance for schools will be brought into line with guidance for other workplaces.’

Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said there was ‘a fair degree of confusion’ about why face coverings were required in some settings but not in schools.

GMB wrote to Education Secretary Gavin Williamson two weeks ago, asking him to consider new rules for wearing masks in schools.

It said school staff questioned why they have to wear masks on public transport to get to work or in shops if they pop out at lunch time — but not in the classroom.

GMB’s national officer Karen Leonard said: ‘Changing the rules for buses and shops to enforce the wearing of masks while actively discouraging those working in schools from even wearing them is causing untold confusion.

‘It’s time for Gavin Williamson and his colleagues to rethink their position, provide clarity and consistency for our valuable school staff, and ensure PPE [personal protective equipment] – including face masks – is available and can be worn by staff in schools where required.’

She added it was ‘plain common sense’ that teachers and other workers in schools should be able to wear coverings.

The Scottish Government has advised that face coverings should also be worn when entering enclosed spaces, including public transport and shops.

Wales and Northern Ireland have rules that say face coverings are mandatory for public transport passengers, but not in shops.

Some European countries have decided to make masks compulsory for teachers and pupils, including Germany.

WHY ARE MASKS NOT COMPULSORY IN SCHOOLS?

In England, the Government has decided that face masks will not be necessary in schools.

Its guidance for schools states that: ‘Wearing a face covering or face mask in schools or other education settings is not recommended.

‘Face coverings may be beneficial for short periods indoors where there is a risk of close social contact with people you do not usually meet and where social distancing and other measures cannot be maintained, for example on public transport or in some shops.

‘This does not apply to schools or other education settings.

‘Schools and other education or childcare settings should therefore not require staff, children and learners to wear face coverings.

‘Changing habits, cleaning and hygiene are effective measures in controlling the spread of the virus.’

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said: ‘If you’re in a space with the same people repeatedly and for long periods of time, whether an office or a classroom, then a mask doesn’t actually protect them.’

In Spain, children aged between 11 and 18 must wear them in settings where they can’t keep at least 1.5m away from other people.

And in France, masks must be worn by teachers if they’re one meter or less away from a child.

The Health Secretary Matt Hancock conceded last week that face masks were a waste of time when people are interacting regularly.

He had been discussing why face masks wouldn’t be necessary in offices, another enclosed space.

Referencing reports that face masks would be necessary at work, Mr Hancock told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on July 15: ‘No, that isn’t going to happen, and the reason is that in offices you tend to spend a lot of time with the same people, and so the way to stop the spread of the virus in offices is to have social distancing, either two metres or one metre plus mitigations in place.

‘The same is true in classrooms, by the way, where if you’re in a classroom, if you’re in a space with the same people repeatedly and for long periods of time, whether an office or a classroom, then a mask doesn’t actually protect them.

‘Where the masks benefits is from you spreading the disease to other people when you have relatively short interactions with lots of different people, which is why it’s right to have this as mandatory on public transport, in shops and in the NHS but not in offices where you’re basically there with the same group of people for long periods of time, or in classrooms where the same applies. So it’s following the scientific advice.’

Primary schools in Britain have already been allowed to reopen to certain year groups and are run in ‘bubbles’ of teachers assigned to certain classes.

Secondary schools, however, have had to remain closed since lockdown was imposed in March and will not reopen until September.

From the start of the school year, all schools in England are set to reopen as normal and attendance will be mandatory again as it is in normal times.

THE TRUTH ABOUT FACE MASKS: WHAT STUDIES HAVE SHOWN

Research on how well various types of masks and face coverings varies but, recently, and in light of the pandemic of COVID-19, experts are increasingly leaning toward the notion that something is better than nothing.

A University of Oxford study published on March 30 concluded that surgical masks are just as effective at preventing respiratory infections as N95 masks for doctors, nurses and other health care workers.

It’s too early for their to be reliable data on how well they prevent infection with COVID-19, but the study found the thinner, cheaper masks do work in flu outbreaks.

The difference between surgical or face masks and N95 masks lies in the size of particles that can – and more importantly, can’t – get though the materials.

N95 respirators are made of thick, tightly woven and molded material that fits tightly over the face and can stop 95 percent of all airborne particles, while surgical masks are thinner, fit more loosely, and more porous.

This makes surgical masks much more comfortable to breathe and work in, but less effective at stopping small particles from entering your mouth and nose.

Droplets of saliva and mucous from coughs and sneezes are very small, and viral particles themselves are particularly tiny – in fact, they’re about 20-times smaller than bacteria.

For this reason, a JAMA study published this month still contended that people without symptoms should not wear surgical masks, because there is not proof the gear will protect them from infection – although they may keep people who are coughing and sneezing from infecting others.

But the Oxford analysis of past studies- which has not yet been peer reviewed – found that surgical masks were worth wearing and didn’t provide statistically less protection than N95 for health care workers around flu patients.

However, any face mask is only as good as other health and hygiene practices. Experts universally agree that there’s simply no replacement for thorough, frequent hand-washing for preventing disease transmission.

Some think the masks may also help to ‘train’ people not to touch their faces, while others argue that the unfamiliar garment will just make people do it more, actually raising infection risks.

So what about cloth coverings? Although good quality evidence is lacking, some data suggest that cloth masks may be only marginally (15 per cent) less effective than surgical masks in blocking emission of particles, said Babak Javid, principal investigator at Cambridge University Hospitals wrote in the BMJ on April 9.

He pointed to a study led by Public Health England in 2013 which found wearing some kind of material over the face was fivefold more effective than not wearing masks for preventing a flu pandemic.

The study suggested that a homemade mask ‘should only be considered as a last resort to prevent droplet transmission from infected individuals, but it would be better than no protection’.