Headteachers welcome buffer zones around schools to stop anti-vaccine protests

Headteachers have welcomed an amendment to a new Bill which will help councils quickly set up buffer zones around schools to stop them from being targeted by anti-vaccination protests.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said in a letter to MPs on Monday that she would back an amendment from the House of Lords to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill that would “enable a local authority to quickly establish a ‘buffer zone’ around schools and vaccination centres if targeted by harmful and disruptive protests, as have been seen recently from ‘anti-vaxxers’”.

A statement from the Home Office added: “She will point out to MPs the irony of recognising the significant harm that can be caused by protests with this amendment and highlight that logic follows that it shouldn’t just be schools and vaccination centres that are protected.”

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders union, said headteachers remain “concerned” that anti-vaccination campaigners are continuing to target schools  “despite the vaccination programme for 12 to 15-year-olds having been underway for many months now”.

“The programme is clearly important in reducing the disruption to education and living with Covid,” he said.

“The amendment to the Policing Bill proposed by the House of Lords, which will allow local authorities to quickly establish buffer zones around schools where there is a threat of disruption, is therefore welcomed as an extra tier of protection.”

Mr Barton said protests seen at schools last year were “completely inappropriate and have a profound impact on both the students and staff caught up in them”.

He said schools played a role as host venues for the School Age Immunisation Service to run vaccination sessions and communicate with pupils and parents, adding that the “vaccine is an offer, not a requirement” and that it was up to individual families to make a decision on Covid-19 vaccines for their child.

“Anything that prevents protests happening again in future is long overdue and we hope the measures in the Policing Bill will come in time to prevent further unwanted disruption to the current vaccination programme,” he added.

“Potential protests cause more worry at a time when schools are already under huge pressure just trying to cope with the ongoing disruption caused by the pandemic.”

Last November, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi told MPs “it was “totally unacceptable” for any headteacher to be “harassed or threatened” by anti-vaxxers.