Fear of SARS led to the headmistress of Harrogate Ladies’ College yesterday locking herself in a boarding house with 43 of her pupils

Dr Margaret Hustler is one of about a dozen boarding school heads who have decided to quarantine pupils returning from China and Hong Kong in school-buildings for the next 10 days of term. The pupils will have no contact with the outside world: the school has set up a system under which Dr Hustler will be alerted by telephone to food parcels and letters left by the back door. It would be, Dr Hustler said, “like Big Brother without the cameras”. Speaking from the house by telephone, she said: “It was a difficult decision. We have 43 girls coming back from Hong Kong or China and there is a very low risk of them developing SARS, but there are 600-odd other pupils here and they and their parents have a lot of anxiety about it.” “Some schools have reacted by refusing to re-admit children. I said I couldn’t morally do that. This feels like the correct thing to do,” she said. She had volunteered to go into quarantine herself as she felt she could not ask a staff member, she added. Asked about her personal fears, she said she didn’t have any.