PRIME Minister Boris Johnson said all schools are to switch to remote learning as he announced a third national lockdown.

He made the announcement tonight as the government looks to combat rapidly rising Covid-19 cases across England.

Summer exams will also not go ahead as planned due to the disruption to learning.

The new national measures will come into effect in the early hours of Wednesday.

This comes mere days after Mr Johnson said schools were "safe" in an appearance on the BBC Andrew Marr show.

The Prime Minister said: "Because we now have to do everything we possibly can to stop the spread of the disease, primary schools, secondary schools and colleges across England must move to remote provision from tomorrow - except for vulnerable children and the children of key workers.

"Everyone will still be able to access early years settings, such as nurseries.

"We recognise that this will mean it's not possible or fair for all exams to go ahead this summer as normal. 

"The Education Secretary will work with Ofqual to put in place alternative arrangements.

"We will provide extra support to ensure that pupils entitled to free school meals will continue to receive them while schools are closed, and we will distribute more devices to support remote education.

"I completely understand the inconvenience and distress this late change will cause millions of parents and pupils up and down the country.

"Parents whose children were in school today, may reasonably ask, 'why did you not take this decision sooner?'.

"The answer is simply that we have been doing everything in our power to keep the schools open, because we know how important each day in education is to children's life chances.

"And I want to stress that the problem is not that schools are unsafe for children.

"Children are still very unlikely to be affected by even the new variant of Covid.

"The problem is that schools may, nonetheless, act as centres of transmission, causing the virus to spread between households."