SCOTLAND'S schools will remain closed until Febraury 1 at the earliest, Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed.
The First Minister made the announcement in Holyrood as part of a host of extra measures to combat the spread of the mutated strain of Covid-19 across Scotland.
The decision will be review in the middle of January.
The announcement will mean an additional two weeks of home learning for most pupils.
The Scottish Government had already announced the festive break was being extended to January 11, with ministers having originally planned for remote learning until January 18.
However, schools will still be open for the children of key workers who cannot work from home, and for vulnerable youngsters.
The Scottish Greens have called for a package of practical support for parents.
The party's co-leader, Patrick Harvie, said: “With schools closing for longer than planned, there is a need for a package of practical support for parents, not only from government but also from employers, especially for single parents, for those living in cramped conditions, and those coping with working from home while schools are closed. People struggled last time but got through.
"They need and deserve our help if they have to do it again."
He added: “I hope the First Minister agrees that teaching unions are rightly concerned about the safety of pupils and the wider community, as well as school staff - it has been appalling to see some people, including prominent political figures, appear to question their judgement and even their integrity in their call for a precautionary response to the pandemic.
“I welcome the fact that the First Minister appears to acknowledge that more needs to be done to accelerate vaccination for teachers and other school staff. We must see meaningful progress on this before the review date of January 18.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel