Headteachers in South Yorkshire hoping isolation rule changes will ease pressure on staff
We've been speaking to Rebecca Staples from Dinnington High School near Rotherham on the issue
From today, people in South Yorkshire who test positive for Covid-19 will only have to self-isolate for five days.
New national rules mean that people will be able to leave isolation after negative lateral flow tests on days five and six-instead of day seven.
Rebecca Staples is the Headteacher of Dinnington High School near Rotherham-She hopes it'll ease the pressure on everyone there a bit:
"Our view is that this will potentially help us. Obviously, it is incredibly important to us that students and staff do the tests properly and carefully, so we know that negative is as certain as it can be.
"In terms of disruption to our school, it will make some difference with any luck.
"Perhaps it won't make quite as much difference as we'd like to think, because the chances are, we'll see people testing positive after the five days, which has been the case with people when they've tested at the seven-day mark."
We went on to ask Rebecca what kind of impact the Omicron variant of Covid-19 has had at Dinnington High School this winter:
"Around 10% of our staff since January have been off with Covid, and of course that's on top of staff off with other illnesses. There are still plenty of other infections and illnesses going around at the moment.
"We did have to close to Year 9 for a short period of time, because I just simply couldn't cover every lesson and we couldn't get supply staff either.
"It's just a massive challenge. Up and down the country it's the same picture-it's so hard."