WHITEHALL has been urged to back-up teachers and lecturers who feel like they are “fighting a pandemic in the classroom on their own.”

As another term begins, teachers and lecturers are expressing concern about the spread of coronavirus in education settings, calling on the Government to offer more solutions.

Primary school teacher and city councillor Louise Atkinson has joined the chorus of dissent. She said that education providers felt abandoned with little resources to fight the spread.

“Part of me feels like I say the same thing over and over again," she said.

"The evidence is there but the Government keep ignoring it. It’s much more difficult to learn remotely. Nobody wants to go back to that but schools and colleges can’t fight a pandemic in the classroom on their own.”

She welcomed the Government’s move to give schools 7,000 air filtration devices for classrooms but feared they might not be enough to fight the Omicron variant.

Cllr Atkinson, who is also vice-president of the National Education Union, said: “Some of the key things we’re asking for centre around ventilation. We’ve got some of the most cramped classrooms in the developed world. There’s almost 30,000 classrooms in the UK.

“We know across Carlisle and Cumbria, headteachers are buying these from school budgets.”

“Educators are 37 per cent more likely to test positive.”

Cllr Atkinson said that although younger people were less impacted by Covid-19, more time in isolation raised safeguarding concerns: “The most vulnerable children in our society are the ones that have been most impacted by the shut downs," she said. "They’re the people in our society that we should be doing the most to protect.”

The National Education Union Councillors Network released an open letter to the Secretary of State for Education on Friday.

It called on him to roll-out filtration devices to all schools: “This solution is completely inadequate for what should be a basic human right, the provision of clean air in every classroom in every educational setting. Leaders should not be expected at this busy time to have to compete with other schools to obtain the few available devices."

The union has also called for a tightening of self-isolation rules to combat the higher transmission of Omicron.

MP for Carlisle John Stevenson said that the Government was doing all it could to fight the spread of Omicron.

"The Government monitors, with advice from experts, exactly what's going on within schools and hospitals and the wider economy.

"I accept it'll be a difficult few weeks but I think the Government is doing all it can."