150,075

of 200,000 signatures

Petition text

To Boris Johnson (Prime Minister), Gavin Williamson (Education Secretary) and local health chiefs,

Please close schools for January to stop the spread of Covid-19. It will save lives.

Please don't allow our children to be the super spreaders of this new variant. One month of remote learning will reduce infection rates and help us organise testing in schools.


There should be no mass return until staff are vaccinated and reliable rapid testing is in place. All schools should be closed until the teachers and support staff receive the vaccine like in the US.

We need to put our children first. With this new more virulent strain of Covid-19, we need to take action quickly to prevent the spread and protect our staff.

Here's what teachers and other education workers are saying on Organise:

"Every high risk place is closing if they can or being offered a vaccine, in schools they’ve been forgotten about and until teachers can get vaccinated it’s putting schools at risk. A lot of pupils barely attended between September-December due to track and trace or contracting the virus that they’d actually get more help if everyone was in the same position with learning online."

"The schools should remain closed until the new variant of COVID is under control. Teachers need to be vaccinated when the schools are closed as it takes 28 days for the vaccine to kick in properly."

"How is it fair that the country is being told to stay at home and interact with as few people as possible when teachers and pupils have to go to school and interact with 90+ family bubbles every day, risking the health of not only ourselves but those in our bubbles. Having had to self isolate for 14 days this half term we proved that we can produce fantastic remote learning lessons and opportunities for children to learn."

"We are at a peak with covid cases, it has been over 10 months since this has affected all of our lives. Most of us are already in tier 4, let’s close schools for 4 weeks to stop the spread once and for all and get the vaccines out."

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Petition: Close schools for January

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