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Covid-19: the return to school

As children start to return to school in Scotland, David Aaronovitch asks how we should balance the risks when reopening schools during a pandemic.

This week children start to return to school in Scotland, with the rest of the UK due to reopen schools in September.

For most students this is the first time they'll be setting foot inside a school since March - the longest interruption to schooling in living memory.

But with the number of coronavirus cases back on the rise, how should we balance the risks of reopening schools, against the risks of keeping them shut?

Contributors:

Professor Bobby Duffy, Director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London.

Professor Jonas Ludviggson, Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

Russell Viner, President of the Royal College of Paediatrics & Child Health and is a scientific adviser to the government as a member of SAGE

Professor Anna Vignoles, University of Cambridge

Inès Hassan, researcher at the Global Health Governance Programme at the University of Edinburgh

Producers: Kirsteen Knight, Beth Sagar-Fenton and Rosamund Jones
Studio manager: Neva Missirian
Editor: Hugh Levinson

Available now

28 minutes

Last on

Sat 15 Aug 2020 11:02

Broadcasts

  • Thu 13 Aug 2020 20:00
  • Sat 15 Aug 2020 11:02

Podcast