Parents with school-age children tend to say they should have to self-isolate

Eir NolsoeData Journalist
July 09, 2021, 9:26 AM GMT+0

Half of parents with children who attend school in person say their kids have had to isolate, including a fifth who say they’ve isolated more than once

Yesterday, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson announced that coronavirus bubbles in schools – that require entire cohorts to self-isolate if one child tests positive – will be scrapped from 19 July.

But neither the general population nor parents with school-age children tend to support the move, YouGov data shows.

Half (50%) of parents of children aged 4 to 18 say pupils should continue to have to self-isolate, while two in five (40%) say they should not.

Support for keeping the measures is slightly higher among the wider public, where 60% want to maintain the requirement for children to quarantine, while only one in four (26%) don’t.

Half of parents with children who attend school in person say they’ve had to isolate

Three in ten parents with children attending school in person (29%) say their kids have had to quarantine on one occasion after coming into contact with someone testing positive for coronavirus. Another one in five (20%) say it has happened several times.

Two thirds of parents (68%) whose children have missed school from having to quarantine say that only their kids self-isolated, as opposed to the whole household. One in five (18%) say everyone stayed at home, while 11% say some, but not all, members of the household quarantined.

Since pupils returned to classrooms this spring, three quarters of parents whose children attend school in person (75%) say coronavirus has been disruptive to their kids’ education. This includes two fifths (42%) who say it’s been very disruptive.

Only a fifth say it’s not been very (16%) or not at all (6%) disruptive.

See the full results here

Explore more data & articles