Welsh Conservatives support calls for teacher vaccination

Welsh Conservative Shadow Minister for Education, Skills and Welsh Language, Suzy Davies MS, has called on the Welsh Government to review the vaccine rollout to teachers in Wales.

Suzy has written to the Welsh Government’s Health Minister making it very clear that the most vulnerable along with health and care staff “absolutely should come first” to reduce mortality. However, for the sake of children’s learning and the ability of teachers to teach, school staff should be next.

Writing to the Welsh Government’s Heath Minister, Suzy Davies MS has said:

“Pupils in Wales have now lost considerable learning as they are being sent home, at short notice and often more than once because of positive cases in the school’s adult population. For some of those children it will have a long-term damaging effect if they don’t have the environment which helps them catch up.”

Continuing, “if staff vaccination prevents adults bringing the virus into schools, and children continue to be low risk as transmitters, then it will be much easier to make the argument to keep schools open with confidence, possibly even with fewer restrictions on distancing/masks.  Education can start to recover in a planned way.”

Commenting, Suzy Davies MS, said:

“Regrettably, the Welsh Government has not succeeded in reassuring teachers and parents on its approach for young people returning to schools, and its inability to convey its message is now causing wide-spread confusion.  This needs leadership not with the Welsh Government once again abandoning its responsibilities and passing the burden to school leaders, often torn by the differing views of parents, their local council and teaching unions.

“The Welsh Government needs to publish the data on school transmission that they spoke of last week, so that it can be scrutinised so that everyone can be given the whole picture of the current situation.

“I hope the Welsh Government will be able to review how and when teachers will be receiving the Covid-19 vaccination so that our young people can properly get back to school and not lose more of their future to this horrible virus.”

ENDS