education

All pupils in Scotland to return to school after Easter break as lockdown eases

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Schoolchildren in Scotland are heading back to classrooms after Easter (Picture: PA)

All pupils in Scotland, except those shielding, will be back in the classroom full time following the Easter holidays, Nicola Sturgeon has announced.

Speaking at the coronavirus briefing in Edinburgh, the First Minister said: ‘Having assessed the data with the input of our clinical advisers, when the Easter holidays end virtually all pupils will return to school full time, so secondary schools after Easter will go back to in-person, full-time learning.

‘The one exception to this is children that are on the shielding list, we are continuing to recommend that they stay at home until April 26 and that’s in line with the advice already received from the chief medical officer.’

Ms Sturgeon said this will be a ‘huge relief’ to many children and parents, adding she hopes children on the shielding list will be back in classrooms by the end of April.

The FM said cases have dropped by 80% in Scotland since early January, and the number of deaths has fallen even more sharply.

But she added: ‘Covid is down in Scotland, you can see that from the figures, but as we can still see here and more starkly in more parts of the world, Covid is not out.

‘It is a virus that is very much still with us.

‘Here in Scotland we are still seeing hundreds of people every day testing positive for it and almost all of the new cases that we are seeing reported now in Scotland are of the new variant that emerged just before Christmas and as we know that variant is more infectious than the variants we were dealing with earlier this year.’

This is a breaking news story, more to follow.

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