‘Masks until half-term’

Seven councils – including Central Bedfordshire, Tameside and Rotherham – are recommending that masks continue until February half-term.

Another five councils – Barking and Dagenham, Blackpool, Salford, Wigan and Derby – say masks should continue until further notice, while Bradford says they should continue until the end of the month.

Officials at the DfE declined to say whether any of the councils which have reimposed masks have sought or obtained permission from ministers.

Council chiefs have been accused of imposing “draconian” rules on school children which go further than what is asked of adults.

Arabella Skinner, director of the parent campaign group UsForThem, said parents were “furious” that face masks still being insisted upon in schools

“As we have seen throughout the pandemic, local public health directors – who are unelected – have taken it on themselves to issue their own more draconian rules for schools,” she said.

“It is notable that they only ever appear to issue these to school children and not to wider society. Parents who live in these areas are furious that their children are subject to this postcode lottery”

‘Masks harming social skills and mental health’

The SNP’s “despised” mask mandate in schools must be ditched immediately due to growing evidence it is harming children’s social skills and mental health, headteachers have warned.

Dorothy MacGinty, head teacher at Kilgraston School in Perthshire, and Rod Grant, headmaster at Clifton Hall in Edinburgh, said lessons were becoming increasingly difficult to deliver and that normal interactions were being lost.

It was claimed that children were coming “bottom of the government’s priority list” and that their civil liberties were being unfairly curtailed.

However, Nicola Sturgeon has so far refused to agree to any change, with the mask rules backed by the powerful EIS teaching union which SNP ministers are reluctant to defy.

In a letter to The Telegraph, Ms MacGinty called on the Scottish Government to “be bold enough” to finally scrap the rule and warned “learning is being critically, perhaps irreversibly, hampered by their use.”

Face-to-face education still ‘priority’

Earlier this week The Telegraph revealed that schools are continuing with their own Plan B measures such as keeping libraries closed, banning hot lunches and insisting on face masks.

A DfE spokesman said that face-to-face education for all students “continues to be our top priority”.

They added: “We kept our promise and removed the requirement for face coverings to be worn in the classroom as quickly as possible, and have now also removed the requirement for them to be worn in communal areas, in line with the national move out of Plan B.

“Our guidance applies to all schools – and if required local teams from the department work with individual schools to support them in implementing the guidance.”