Italian children are happy in schools and must stay there despite calls for closures due to COVID spikes, Education Minister Lucia Azzolina said Tuesday.
Azzolina said infections did not take place in schools as a rule and that without the social contact they had in institutes children would seek it elsewhere with dangerous consequences.
Italian schoolchilden only recently returned to school for the new year after half of last year went into home schooling because of COVID.
"The kids are happy to have returned to school," the minister told ANSA.
"And they must stay there.
"For the older ones, too, in-presence teaching is fundamental because it guarantees education but also social contact, which otherwise the young people would go looking for elsewhere".
There have been calls for a return to remote learning, especially for high schools.
But Azzolina stressed: "The numbers and analyses from the Higher Health Institute confirm to us that contagion does not take place in schools.
"Attention must rather be focused outside, on extracurricular activities, as we have been saying for some time".
Child infection rates have been higher for such after-school activities as sport.
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