Updated guidelines - is your child well enough to go to school?

Children should stay home for five days if they test positive for COVID-19. Children also need to stay home from school if they have another infectious illness that their doctor or the public health service has said they need to isolate.

When a child should be kept at home:

The health advice outlines several "symptoms of concern" that should mean children stay home from school.

These are:

• Fever
• Vomiting or diarrhoea
• Sore throat
• School sores and other skin infections that are red, swollen, oozing, weeping or blistered, or feel hot to touch
• A new rash or itches
• Head lice (nits) and scabies
• Wheezing or difficulty breathing.

Children should stay home for five days if they test positive for COVID-19, although the guidance says some students may need longer to recover. If somebody else at home has Covid, students can still go to school if they don’t have symptoms and feel well.

Children also need to stay home from school if they have another infectious illness that their doctor or the public health service has said they need to isolate.

As always - if a child gets increasingly unwell, parents or caregivers are advised to get health advice.

If a child hasn’t had a fever for 24 hours or had medicine to reduce their fever in that time, and only has a mild cough, headache or runny/blocked nose, they can go to school if they have tested negative for Covid-19 and seem otherwise happy. The advice says children with a history of hay fever or allergies can go to school if they develop their usual symptoms of sneezing, coughing, a runny or blocked nose or itchy face. "If your child only has a runny nose after a change in air temperature, for example, moving from outdoors to indoors, or they only sneeze because of the sun or dust, they do not need to be kept home from school," the advice says. Children can also go to school with eczema.