Back to school: but where will they sit?
The prolonged closure of our schools “is an educational, social and economic calamity”. said Allister Heath in The Daily Telegraph. As lockdown drags on, children remain stuck at home. “Millions are not being educated at all; others barely so.” They are having to do without sport, clubs, friendships; many are depressed. Needy children are going hungry; abuse cases have shot up; the educational gap between rich and poor children is growing. If countries such as France and Sweden can open their schools without seeing a surge in infections, why can’t we. Answer? Because, hard-left teaching unions seem set on sabotaging the “careful, limited reopening of English schools planned by the Government”, starting with a limited number of primary school children returning on 1 June.
Of course, we all want to see children back in school – but the decision over timing is fraught with difficulty, said Natalie Perera in Schools Week. If “children, teachers, families, businesses and society” are to be protected, the scientific advice must “take precedence”. And until it is published in full, we cannot expect parents or teachers to feel “completely confident” about opening school doors. But the argument isn’t really over the science, said Andrew Pierce in the Daily Mail. Although the National Education
Union has filed a “ludicrous” list of 169 “elf ’n’ safety” concerns, their resistance to schools reopening is at root political. You only have to look at the 1,173 councillors it has got to sign its so-called cross-party letter opposing the policy: 967 are Labour, just seven are Tory. Equally dismaying, said The Mail on Sunday, is the “cowardly and self-serving” failure of the supposedly moderate Labour leader, Keir Starmer, to back the return to school policy. This, despite the revelation that his own offspring have been attending school all along (his wife being a key worker). If he feels it’s safe enough for them, why not for others? His silence is nakedly political: the spirit of Corbyn lives on.
In theory a return to school seems a good and necessary idea, said Stephen Bush in the New Statesman. The problem lies in the practicalities. The average size of a primary school class is 27 pupils; if these are to be split into groups of 15 to promote social distancing, there simply won’t be enough teachers and classrooms to go round. Besides, most classrooms in primary schools don’t have desks in rows that can be separated, but circular tables. And those are just a few of the logistical challenges that lie in wait. So whatever the safety implications, reopening schools will prove an “administrative nightmare”.