A new term: but schools remain empty
In an alternative Britain, the one that existed before coronavirus, children would have trooped back to school this week for the summer term, said the London
Evening Standard. As it is, schools remain open only to the children of key workers and to pupils with special educational needs. The vast majority of Britain’s ten million schoolchildren are stuck at home. Over the weekend it was reported that some classes might go back on 11 May, but Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, denied this. The Government, he said, was studying measures being deployed in other European countries, such as Denmark, that have started to reopen their schools, but had set no date yet to follow suit. It’s thought that children in this country are unlikely to return to their classes until at least after half-term, at the start of June.
The forced experiment in home schooling has generated a lot of jokes about parents being driven to drink by the pressures of teaching their children while holding down jobs, said James Kirkup in The Spectator. But as stressful as this situation is for all families, it’s particularly bad for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. “A lot of the wealth gap in education comes down to differences at home.” Studies have shown that while middle-class pupils maintain their levels of learning over the summer holidays, those from poorer homes, who are less likely to have parents with the resources to develop their literacy and numeracy, tend to regress. Around 1.3 million children qualify for free school meals. Many of them will lack access to online teaching tools (only 34% of all pupils have taken part in online lessons) and be at risk of going hungry. The longer this school lockdown goes on, the bigger the gap between rich and poor will grow.
Children need to get back to school, agreed The Guardian. It’s not good for them to be separated from their friends, teachers and routines for so long. Quite how this can be achieved, however, is a tricky issue. There has been talk of introducing physical distancing measures by spacing out desks and closing playgrounds, but experts doubt that would work with younger children. And there would be many other logistical problems to resolve. How, for instance, would schools protect older and vulnerable teachers? What would they do about children who live with grandparents or ill relatives, or ones whose parents were reluctant to send them back? The thought of schools potentially remaining closed until September is terrible. But as things stand, it’s hard to see “why schools in May, June or September will be any safer – for pupils, their families and teachers – than they are now”.