Figures published today show that more than 1 million children - a quarter of children attending maintained schools - were out of school last week.
The requirement to keep children in small, consistent groups - ‘bubbles’ - ended on 19 July but changes to self-isolation rules for children and double-vaccinated adults are not set to come into force until 16 August.
All education settings have been told that NHS Test and Trace will be taking over responsibility for contact tracing from 19 July, but early years settings say they do not know how this will work in practice.
At Paint Pots Nurseries in Southampton the ‘significant’ increase in alerts and positive cases in individuals linked to the group’s settings has coincided with the change to the regulations and guidance yesterday.
David Wright, owner of Paint Pots, told Nursery World, ‘The blurring of the lines between statutory requirements and best endeavours based on a sense of civic duty and frankly guesswork, has brought utter confusion and more anxiety to already overstretched teams.
‘There is a sense, as has been felt so often over the last 18 months, that Early Years has once again been overlooked, an afterthought, and is just expected to muddle through the next month until 16 August when we can be the guinea pigs for the rest of the education sector before it returns in September.
‘In the meantime, service is significantly impacted by the rising number of isolations and positive cases and providers are uncertain whether they are following the correct procedure – do we phone the DfE? Apparently, depending on who you talk to, it is possible to get several different sets of "official" advice as to what to do. Do we still report cases to Ofsted, our local authority? – yes to both apparently.’
The change to guidance has also caused chaos in schools, with some head teachers choosing to keep to bubbles until the end of the summer term, leading to whole year groups unable to finish the school term.
A primary school parent, who wished to remain anonymous, said, 'My child's school notified me just this morning that the whole year group of around 60 children need to self-isolate because of a positive Covid case.
'I thought that from today only close contacts have to self-isolate, not whole bubbles, but I've no way of knowing whether my daughter was near the infected child. Also, am I legally required to keep her at home if I've not been formally contacted by Test and Trace now that responsibility has been taken back from schools? The school is in an impossible situation and so are parents. We're juggling what's safe for the community with what's right for a child's health and wellbeing and the guidance is confusingly ambiguous.'
Neil Leitch, Early Years Alliance chief executive, said the early years sector needed ‘clear, consistent guidance’ from Government.
‘The easing of Covid restrictions should have been a positive development for the early years sector,' he said. 'Instead, we now have a situation where many providers aren’t sure what the current rules are, how they will work in practice and what exactly they need to be doing to continue keeping themselves, their colleagues and the children in their care safe.
‘Add to this the recent announcement that some critical workers are to be made exempt from self-isolation rules ahead of 16 August, without any real detail on who this will include, and whether it will apply to the early years sector, and it is no wonder that so many practitioners are increasingly confused and concerned about these recent changes.’
EYFS trainer and consultant Alison Featherbe said on Twitter, ‘If we know close contacts are 5 times more likely to contract Covid-19, then why do Early Years providers, from today, have no clear guidance to require close contacts to self isolate? Now reliant on NHS T&T to ask parents who the close contacts are - hello, they won't know!’
Ahead of the changes, June O' Sullivan, CEO of the London Early Years Foundation (LEYF0, tweeted, ‘Tomorrow #earlyyears colleagues. Be brave and do what will keep the staff and children safe. Keep your risk assessments strong and don't change what currently works because we getting confused messaging, unclear #TrackandTrace info and rising #Covid19UK.’
On Monday, Boris Johnson said that critical workers would be exempt from self-isolating and would be allowed to use daily testing instead provided they are fully vaccinated, but has not yet revealed details as to how this will actually work.
The Government has faced calls to clarify which sectors of the workforce would be exempt under the plans.
Ms O’Sullivan is calling for the Government to make fully vaccinated nursery workers exempt from the NHS Test and Trace Covid app if they come into contact with a confirmed case.
In the past three weeks alone, LEYF has closed three of its 42 London based nurseries leaving more than 150 parents without childcare, for a week.
'Nurseries are the lifeline in keeping people in work and the economy afloat which is why the Government must rethink the self isolation rules by allowing fully vaccinated nursery workers to be exempt from the Covid app if they come into contact with a confirmed case and take a daily PCR test for seven days instead,' she said.
'Whilst the health and safety of our workforce and children is our number one priority, it’s absurd that the majority of those who have been "pinged" are not infected which is causing havoc in public services, key industries and education.
'During the height of the pandemic, nurseries across the UK made huge sacrifices to support the NHS and keep key workers fully operational. Despite this, the Government's Covid stance has been a shambles in the past few days with no clear guidance for the sector.
'If Mr Johnson is serious about his predicted "dynamism" of England's cities returning "remarkably quickly" once workers return to offices, this will not be possible if the country is left without childcare during a summer of discontent.'
The National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) has also called for nursery workers to be included on the exemption list.
Purnima Tanuku, chief executive of the NDNA, said, ‘Nurseries and their staff are a vital part of our national infrastructure and were included in the critical workers list at the beginning of the pandemic. They are crucial to our educational and economic recovery.
‘Therefore, they must be included in any plans to reduce self-isolation in order to support young children in their development and enable their parents to work.
‘Numbers of cases are soaring again which will result in more nurseries having to close rooms not just for positive cases but for a lack of early years practitioners because so many are having to isolate themselves.’
The Department for Education was approached for a comment.