Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 01 December 2021
The safety of children and young people, and, indeed, all education staff remains our absolute overriding priority, particularly as we approach winter. Ventilation is a key line of defence, along with vaccination, face coverings, good hand hygiene, regular testing and surveillance. When the omicron variant is causing great concern here and around the world, we must be vigilant and ready to take any action that is necessary.
It is true that, as the motion sets out, case rates among under-15s remain high. To minimise disruption to learning and teaching, it is vital to make best use of all the mitigations that we know are effective.
As Michael Marra’s motion highlights, ensuring that all learning and teaching spaces are adequately ventilated is vital—that much we agree with. Ventilation remains one of the most important ways of reducing the risk of airborne Covid transmission and keeping our schools as safe as possible. That is why the Scottish Government has worked closely throughout the pandemic with the advisory sub-group on education and children’s issues, expert bodies such as the Health and Safety Executive and local authorities to put in place and update national guidance on ventilation and CO2 monitoring in schools.
We have allocated significant funding—not just the £10 million that Michael Marra mentioned but £90 million of Covid logistics funding, which was provided earlier in the pandemic and included support that many local authorities used to improve ventilation. That was added to by £10 million of support to ensure that all local authority schools and all day care of children services had access to CO2 monitoring.
About 22,000 CO2 monitors have been purchased, and all the initial CO2 assessments of learning, teaching and play spaces in Scotland are now complete. The programme of assessment was led by local authorities, with support from Scottish Government officials and the Scottish Futures Trust. They worked collaboratively to align best practice.
Wherever possible before the October break, every learning, teaching and play space had to receive an initial assessment for at least a day under normal occupancy conditions, so that readings were properly representative. The approach was to continue in line with the local authority’s monitoring strategy thereafter. That exercise was an important step forward for our understanding of ventilation across the learning estate, and we are grateful for the hard work that was put into completing the initial assessments, which drew on the criteria for acceptable CO2 levels that are set out in Scottish Government guidance.
The full operational detail about the outcome of assessments, including the number of spaces where concerns were identified, is held at a local level. I have explained that to Michael Marra in the past. However, local authorities have been asked throughout the process to provide overarching feedback on the extent to which CO2 levels have exceeded the thresholds that are set out in the guidance. As I said in my intervention, those levels align with expert advice that, in general, regular readings of 1,500 parts per million indicate a need to take action and that in areas of high aerosol generation—where, for example, physical education or loud singing is being undertaken—levels of 800 parts per million should be used as a benchmark.