Primary pupils’ lessons in life after lockdown
Temperature checks at the school gates, teddy bears placed in quarantine and no more playground games of It: welcome to school in post-lockdown Britain.
Children in Reception and Years 1 and 6 were allowed back to their classrooms yesterday, 10 weeks after they were closed to stymie the spread of coronavirus. But school is nothing like it was before.
There are many new rules. Sharing toys is not allowed, and many are returning only part-time to allow room for social distancing in the classroom.
Children at the Hiltingbury Infant School in Chandler’s Ford, Hampshire, have to practise “helicopter arms”. Placing their arms out wide, they are being encouraged to rotate them in a circular motion to make sure no one gets too close to them.
Even nursery rhymes have changed. At Harris Primary Academy Mayflower in Essex, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” is now “Wash, wash, wash your hands / Wash them in the sink / Stay two metres apart / Don’t forget to think”.
The Daily Telegraph was granted access to St Alban’s Catholic Primary School in Cambridge. At lunchtime, all is quiet in its ordinarily noisy canteen. A dozen or so pupils are eating sandwiches, but conversation is difficult with each one sat at their own table, all facing the same way like at a cinema. “It feels very eerie in here”, says Joe Mccrossan, the head teacher.
Everything seems severe. Any extraneous shared equipment has been removed from the classrooms, including cuddly toys, reading books and soft carpets.
The Reception classroom has been closed entirely because it has too many playthings and even Bibles have been taped off in case they carry disease. “They get a wallet with their learning materials, a table and a chair and that’s it”, says Mr Mccrossan.
There are staggered start times so children and parents can queue up at a safe two-metre distance outside. On
Monday morning, some parents were crying at the drop off. “Parents are anxious about coming back”, he says.
“We have a diverse European community here who hear stories about what it’s like back home. People don’t have confidence in the safety of the school.”
A few parents have refused to send their children back, and not just due to safety concerns. In fact, for some, the precautions are the problem: “It’s a lot for five and six-year-old children,” admits Mr Mccrossan.
The student body has been split into four “bubbles”, with each using different rooms in the school, and entering through different gates. Arrows have been taped on the floor to show which way they can move around the school and which toilets they are allowed to use.
Friendship groups have been taken into account when splitting up the bubbles, but no system could be perfect. It is particularly difficult for children of key workers, who sit together in a mixed-year class five days a week. Each has their own laptop on which they watch videos of their teachers explaining the day’s work – teachers who often are in the building, giving that lesson in the flesh to other children. Friends in their own year are now back in the building, but they are not allowed to see them.
Breaktimes are on a rota system, with each bubble using the playground at different times. There are no toys to play with and hardly anyone around, so teachers lead running games and rounds of “Simon Says” to pass the time.
I watch a teacher explain the rules of one game. A child in Year 1 asks: “So it’s like It, but without touching?”
The day has been meticulously planned and is policed by parent volunteers in hi-viz jackets, clutching printed schedules. Each group has 15
‘Last night was the most worrying night of my life as a teacher, worse than Ofsted’
minutes to eat lunch, allowing time to empty the canteen and disinfect it before the next lot comes in. Not everything runs to plan: it turns out that five-year-olds need closer to half an hour to eat a sandwich, carrots and a biscuit unaided. Afterwards they file out and a teacher reminds them: “Don’t hold hands!”
There is no space in the rota for Year 6 children to have lunch in the canteen at all, so they eat in their classrooms.
The dizzying levels of planning involved in this style of teaching are already taking their toll on teachers: “Last night was the most worrying night of my life as a teacher, worse than Ofsted,” says Mr Mccrossan. “I’ve got all this planning in my head.”
But not everything is for the worse: class sizes have slimmed down significantly to allow for enough spacing, with some down from 30 to just five. With so few pupils to teach, the lessons are going faster than before, says Mr Mccrossan.
I sit in on a Year 1 class, where four boys and one girl sit two metres apart on the floor. There is no misbehaviour whatsoever – the children could try whispering to their neighbour, but they’re so far apart that it’s unlikely they would hear.
The online schoolwork appears to have worked: each child reads fluently and confidently from the board as if they hadn’t been off at all.
It is surprising how much these young children understand about the situation.
“I was impressed by their level of understanding. They know to stay two metres apart and not share equipment”, says Monika Czernuszewicz, who teaches Year 1. It has been three months since she’s last seen the class, which is a long time in the life of a six-year-old. “Children change quickly and in the three months they’ve been away they’ve all visibly matured.”
But all these systems are put on hold when illness comes into the school.
If any pupil or teacher displays symptoms of coronavirus, all children in their bubble will have to go home again for a fortnight.
And no system is faultless. Back in the lunch hall there are a few minor slip-ups: tables run short and some have to share. Sometimes children forget and touch each other at play time.
Even with the most vigorous preparation, the most Napoleonic tactics, it is still children who have to carry out the plan.
‘Children have 15 minutes lunch to eat their lunch, then the canteen is disinfected’