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Episode details

Radio 4,13 Aug 2020,28 mins

Covid-19: the return to school

The Briefing Room

Available for over a year

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

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