Flu: Vaccination plan for children

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If the plans are agreed, it would be the biggest mass vaccination since pupils were given jabs against smallpox in 1964.

The Department of Health (DH) stressed that no decision had been made on delivering the vaccination programme.

But a spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families confirmed the proposals are being considered. He said: "All options are being considered. Schools have been used in the past for vaccination."

The spokesman added that using schools would be a "logical" way of giving vaccinations, if necessary.

Around 8.5 million pupils, aged five to 16, could be given the injections at the UK's 33,700 schools by nurses, health visitors and doctors, the Guardian reported.

It would be part of plans to minimise the harm caused by the virus if an expected second wave of the pandemic strikes in the autumn.

Parents would need to give permission for the child to be vaccinated, but demand is likely to be high as long as the vaccine is declared safe, the newspaper said.

But there are questions over whether there will be enough health professionals to carry out the vaccinations - there are just 1,447 schools nurses covering 25,000 schools in England.

The proposals emerged as new Government figures showed that the numbers of people being diagnosed with swine flu dropped from 110,000 to 30,000 over the last seven days. But there have been nine new deaths related to the virus in the last week, and 36 people have now died.