Schools to be given resources to combat vaccine hesitancy

Teacher who came up with idea said he noticed pupils ‘becoming increasingly fearful of vaccination,’ Zoe Tidman reports

More than half of the UK’s population has received a first jab (Getty)

Schools are to be given resources to help pupils tackle conspiracy theories about coronavirus vaccines.

A charity has said it will provide critical-thinking tools for school assemblies and lessons, to help students discuss any concerns they have over jabs.

The Are Vaccines Safe? scheme provides schools with accurate, scientific information on a range of frequently asked questions about the Covid-19 vaccination programme.

Data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) has suggested that younger adults, those living in poorer neighbourhoods and black people have the highest levels of vaccine hesitancy.

Overall, statistics from the survey, conducted between mid-January and early February, showed reluctance among less than 10 per cent of the population.

The Stephen Hawking Foundation has now developed resources to offer schools for free to help combat hesitancy. These will be updated in line with the latest scientific developments.

The move has been hailed by the UK’s leading teaching union, whose general secretary said that school was “absolutely the right place” for these conversations over vaccines to happen.

“Young people have many questions about Covid and the vaccine, and this is not surprising when they themselves have been so frequently at the centre of its news coverage,” Kevin Courtney from the National Education Union (NEU) said.

Last month, a member of the government’s vaccine taskforce said there had been no final decisions on vaccinating children in the UK against Covid-19, following a report claiming the government was considering plans to start rolling out jabs to under-18s as early as August. 

Trials are being run to establish the safety and effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines in children, with data from one showing that the Pfizer-BioNTech jab is safe to use and provides high levels of protection against Covid-19 in 12 to 15-year-olds.

Earlier this month, a trial of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 jab in children was paused as investigators looked into a possible link with rare blood clots.

Developing the vaccine resources for schools, the Stephen Hawking Foundation worked with staff at Morpeth School in Tower Hamlets, who initially devised the materials.

Ed Stubbs, a science teacher at the east London school, who came up with the idea, said he had noticed pupils “becoming increasingly fearful of vaccination”.

“The charged and often accusatory debate about vaccination choices can make young people feel hesitant about voicing their concerns and seeking help in debunking false information,” he said.

“They fear critical judgment over their doubts. I decided to create a set of unbiased resources for use in schools.”

The charity then developed the resources with help from Queen Mary University of London and the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, with input from pupils, teachers, scientists and community representatives.

They have been endorsed by the NEU, which will promote them to members, and the race equality think tank the Runnymede Trust.

Runnymede Trust chief executive Dr Halima Begum said: “This will have a particularly positive effect on young people from black and minority ethnic groups, who are often in households where their grandparents and parents rely on good advice from their children, as a result of various cultural barriers in accessing community health support.”

Official figures have shown the proportion of black or black British adults reporting hesitancy over coronavirus vaccines has halved in roughly a month.

About 22 per cent of black or black British adults reported hesitancy in an ONS survey conducted between mid-February and mid-March, which is half the figure in the comparable poll from earlier this year.

This was still the highest level in all ethnic groups, with 13 per cent of adults in the Asian or Asian British group reporting hesitancy along with 12 per cent of those with mixed ethnicity.

More than 33.5 million people in the UK – over half of the total population – have received the first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, according to official figures.