Should teachers be prioritised for vaccination over half-term?

There is much in the news today about vaccinating school teachers and staff during the half-term break to allow schools to return to normality faster, having a positive impact on children’s education and mental health.

Britain’s top schools have unveiled a bold plan to vaccinate the country’s entire teaching staff and get pupils back into the classroom.

Headteachers have drawn up a detailed blueprint to get the educational workforce, including support staff, inoculated over the February half-term week.

The ambitious scheme could prove a political lifeline to Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he faces mounting calls to put teachers at the front of the queue for jabs and prevent more catastrophic damage to the prospects of millions of locked-down children.

Under the emergency scheme, 150 independent schools and state academies would become vaccination hubs with medically trained staff inoculating school workers for 16 hours a day.

The plan’s architects claim that ‘most or even all’ of England’s one million school and nursery teachers, teaching assistants and support staff, including dinner ladies and caretakers, could be vaccinated within the week

By using the stocks of the vaccine on these key workers the trade-off would mean the delay in vaccinating the vulnerable groups set out in the vaccination programme.

The plan is being backed by the Leader of the Labour party. Boris Johnson has challenged  Sir Keir Starmer to “explain which vaccines he would take from which vulnerable groups” in order to achieve the vaccination of teachers. He claimed the prime minister “hasn’t got a plan” for the reopening of schools and said a “first step” should be the vaccination of all teachers and school staff during the “window” of next month’s half-term.

What are your views? Do you think this makes sense? Is the vaccination trade-off a good idea? If the vulnerable people are shielding does it make more sense to use the vaccine stocks in this way?