Fears schools under Tier 4 Covid restrictions will not reopen in January

There are growing fears that schools under the highest coronavirus restrictions will not reopen after Christmas.

Matt Hancock, the health secretary, declined to confirm yesterday whether pupils at schools in Tier 4 areas would return to classrooms in January if cases continued to rise.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, said only: “There are no plans for schools to close.”

Asked to guarantee that schools in Tier 4 areas would remain open, Mr Hancock said: “I’ve learnt not to rule anything out in this pandemic.”

He told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One: “The plan is not for normal opening. It’s for a staggered start in order to ensure that there’s testing so that we can isolate the children