Trust scientists, not the teachers, on reopening
Teachers are understandably worried at reopening schools, but the Government must follow the science — which says it’s safe, writes
THE collapse of talks aimed at getting Leaving Certificate students back behind their desks hasn’t exactly calmed the choppy waters of parental discontent about ongoing school closures.
The problem the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland (ASTI) reportedly has with the plans is that the union doesn’t think it’s possible to properly implement calculated grades for a second year running as teachers have even less information to assess pupils in 2021 than they did in 2020.
They could be right. What are teachers expected to base their grades on — pupils’ horoscopes?
The problem with ASTI’s position is that if calculated grades are off the table, then the only alternative is for students to sit actual written and practical exams in the summer, and for that to happen schools must open in double-quick time — a course of action that many teachers are still resisting.
It’s a vicious circle, which no one seems willing or able to break.
Logic dictates that teachers must pick one of the two options, and do it soon, but ministers are too afraid of the unions to confront the contradiction, and people more widely bite their tongues because they genuinely appreciate the work that public sector workers do.
Nurses and doctors keep our loved ones alive. Teachers look after and educate our children.
An excess of gratitude means that too many hold back from pointing it out when teachers are making this crisis worse.
Teachers have raised a number of concerns about returning to the classroom at the present time.
They want guarantees that there will be adequate PPE for pupils and teachers alike, as well as proper testing and contact tracing, and special arrangements for staff in high-risk categories.
These are not unreasonable requests, and having a go at teachers for wanting such reassurances only deflects attention from the Government’s responsibility to protect the most vulnerable workers and provide the rest with the right PPE, and reliable testing and tracking.
Had they done so, many of the concerns expressed by teachers would have been satisfied already.
They may have come up with new reasons not to return to work as normal. We’ll never know. It’s still not the teachers’ fault that the Government failed to take basic measures to keep schools open.
The Government must also take the blame for giving the impression of waiting for something to happen to resolve the stand off, rather than taking decisive action to make it so.
From the start of the Covid crisis, the Government has said it will be guided by “the science”.
Defining what the science says on particular questions isn’t always straightforward, because even the most rigorous research comes with caveats, its findings open to challenge. But a certain amount of political damage could have been minimised by simply acceding to the advice of the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet).
People may be frustrated by the lockdown, but they generally understand why measures are in place as long as it’s what Nphet demands.
Suddenly, when it comes to schools, Nphet’s advice that there is “very little evidence of transmission in schools” is deemed to be expendable. The Minister of Education said last month that “at no stage” has she been advised that keeping schools open is unsafe.
Multiple evidence from other countries supports the same conclusion. In American states where schools reopened after lockdown, there has been no surge in cases. Indeed, the US Centres for Disease Control concludes that infection rates in places where education is done in person are the same as those where it happens online.
The UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) likewise has found teachers face a far lower risk of dying from Covid than numerous other categories of workers — not only nurses, doctors, and care workers but also taxi drivers, catering staff, security guards and machine operatives.
Between March and November last year, the ONS recorded only 50 deaths from Covid among teachers, out of a death toll that now tops 100,000 in the UK.
Teaching unions in Britain did publish a study that claimed teachers were being infected at a rate more than 300pc greater than the general population; but that turned out to be based on self-reported symptoms rather than confirmed cases of infection.
Yet in Britain, too, despite the Government’s own Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies saying schools are safe to open, and despite being under considerable pressure to open them again, Boris Johnson faces the same pushback from some teaching unions as here in Ireland.
This is not the case in many other countries. In France, except for a period from March to May last year, they have made keeping schools open a priority. Infection rates did not go up. The difference is not scientific, but cultural.
In France, both unions and government are strongly opposed to closing schools, which means that French children have spent more days in school during the pandemic than in any other EU nation.
The main reason is to safeguard children’s mental health since the consequences of isolating them from their peers, and depriving them of a sense of purpose, are devastating both in the long-term and the here-and-now.
Not all pupils have the tools needed to access remote learning, or live in home environments that enable them to do so in comfort, quiet and safety. Schools are a safety net for them, a refuge for others.
There are also dreadful consequences for equality and social mobility. Speaking last year, one representative of France’s largest teaching union observed: “We completely lost contact with some pupils from the poorer neighbourhoods.” Even when schools reopened, many pupils didn’t return.
The political culture in Ireland couldn’t be more different. Here there is a shocking timidity when it comes to questioning school closures. If anything, the Opposition demands stricter lockdowns.
Last week, Labour’s education spokesman, Aodhán Ó Riordáin, launched a campaign to get €100m of funding to help pupils who’ve missed out on schooling catch up. He was, he said, “so proud” of it.
But those pupils will never truly catch up until schools reopen, so when should that be?
Pressed to answer that question on Virgin Media’s Tonight Show on Tuesday, Ó Riordáin simply said it should be “when it was safe to do so” and “if it is agreed”.
It’s a total cop-out, which doesn’t even define what counts as “safe” or “agreed”.
What scientific consensus there is already says that schools are safe to open. So we must wait for those most reluctant to return to normal to get on board before anything can happen? That gives too much power to those who want schools to remain closed.
That there is practically no one of standing or authority in Irish life prepared to state unambiguously that schools must reopen is surely what makes parents so frustrated, and frequently intemperate when discussing the issue.
It’s understandable. It’s not as if they’re are asking teachers to ignore the science for the greater good. They’re just asking teachers to follow it.
You certainly can’t acknowledge that shutting schools has been “profoundly damaging” for children, and has “exacerbated existing inequalities” in education and health, as Ó Riordáin does, without also acknowledging the reason they’re struggling is schools remaining closed, and that there’s no way through the maze without reopening them.
In the end, it may be necessary to offer priority vaccines to teachers to get schools back up and running — hard as it is, given the figures and the scarcity of doses, to justify putting the less vulnerable ahead of sick, older people who have borne the deadly brunt of the virus.
Just don’t pretend that letting the young and healthy jump the queue would be anything other than a grubby political trade-off.
‘The reason why some countries have shut schools has nothing to do with science’