Schools dilemma

SINCE March past, kitchen epidemiology has supplanted the weather as the mainstay of our general conversations.

Like the great majority, I have no qualifications in that area – but, having spent the last six decades in classrooms of one type or another, I feel that I can speak with a fair measure of authority on schooling and its management.

The critical question of the moment is how to manage the reopening of schools, and it is proving to be a right ceist chasta [complex question] for all concerned. Everyone agrees it must be done safely, but how is this safe return to be actualised?

The very nature of the curricula is based on integrated, interactive milieux. We are told the children are very unlikely to be stricken with the coronavirus. But, like the much-vaunted unbreakable toy that is used with facility to break all the other toys, these children can transmit the virus readily to teachers, parents, grandparents and an array of relations.

Rightly were we preoccupied with not letting our health service implode from March to May. Should we not be equally circumspect about the education service crashing in the OctoberChristmas period?

In the warm, humid, centrally heated and often poorly ventilated classrooms of wintertime Ireland, some realistic protocols will have to be agreed on distancing and minimum areas per pupil. If we do not get to grips with that, we are queuing up problems that could crash not just our schools and teaching force, but also in consequence our health service as well, in the feared second wave. CLLR JOE CONWAY, Waterford City & County Council.