An analysis of school absences in England during the Covid-19 pandemic
Preprint
- 16 February 2021
- preprint
- research article
- Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Abstract
The introduction of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 infection, in the UK in early 2020, resulted in the UK government introducing several control policies in order to reduce the spread of disease. As part of these restrictions, schools were closed to all pupils in March (except for vulnerable and key worker children), before re-opening to certain year groups in June. Finally all school children returned to the classroom in September. In this paper, we analyse the data on school absences from September 2020 to December 2020 as a result of COVID-19 infection and how that varied through time as other measures in the community were introduced. We utilise data from the Educational Settings database compiled by the Department for Education and examine how pupil and teacher absences change in both primary and secondary schools. Our results show that absences as a result of COVID-19 infection rose steadily following the re-opening of schools in September. Cases in teachers were seen to decline during the November lockdown, particularly in those regions that had previously been in tier 3, the highest level of control at the time. Cases in secondary school pupils increased for the first two weeks of the November lockdown, before decreasing. Since the introduction of the tier system, the number of absences owing to confirmed infection in primary schools was observed to be significantly lower than in secondary schools across all regions and tiers. In December, we observed a large rise in the number of absences per school in secondary school settings in the South East and Greater London, but such rises were not observed in other regions or in primary school settings. We conjecture that the increased transmissibility of the new variant in these regions may have contributed to this rise in cases in secondary schools. Finally, we observe a positive correlation between cases in the community and cases in schools in most regions, with weak evidence suggesting that cases in schools lag behind cases in the surrounding community. We conclude that there is not significant evidence to suggest that schools are playing a significant role in driving spread in the community and that careful monitoring may be required as schools re-open to determine the effect associated with open schools upon community incidence.Keywords
Other Versions
- Published version: Version BMC Medicine, 19, preprints
This publication has 14 references indexed in Scilit:
- Fast-spreading U.K. virus variant raises alarmsScience, 2021
- Association of tiered restrictions and a second lockdown with COVID-19 deaths and hospital admissions in England: a modelling studyThe Lancet Infectious Diseases, 2020
- High prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 swab positivity and increasing R number in England during October 2020: REACT-1 round 6 interim reportPublished by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory ,2020
- Mild or Moderate Covid-19The New England Journal of Medicine, 2020
- Factors associated with COVID-19-related death using OpenSAFELYNature, 2020
- Global, regional, and national estimates of the population at increased risk of severe COVID-19 due to underlying health conditions in 2020: a modelling studyThe Lancet. Global Health, 2020
- Presenting Characteristics, Comorbidities, and Outcomes Among 5700 Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19 in the New York City AreaJAMA, 2020
- Alterations in Smell or Taste in Mildly Symptomatic Outpatients With SARS-CoV-2 InfectionJAMA, 2020
- Real-time tracking of self-reported symptoms to predict potential COVID-19Nature Medicine, 2020
- A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China, 2019The New England Journal of Medicine, 2020