Enough already: let’s just get on with it

THE much-awaited document for opening schools came through last week. It is long and detailed. It could be summarised as follows: Get on with it. That is the message for teachers and especially principals.

A lot of debate has focused on social distancing. Anyone who thinks it’s going to work in schools needs a visit to somebody wearing a white coat.

Schools should stop running around with metre sticks and cease talking about taking five or six desks out of a class — it is all so silly. Where do those students go? Who will teach them? Will they just lounge around in corridors?

The reality of school life is that students will mix and talk, and mix more, before during and after school.

The idea that social distancing is then going to take place inside a school building with narrow corridors is a fallacy and the document should have acknowledged that. To pretend otherwise is only stressing out some principals.

There will be busloads of students from a mixture of schools coming into towns and cities all over the country. No social distancing there, but then it’s supposed to happen in school? No chance.

I have seen social distancing — or the lack of it — in action on many occasions during the break.

One evening I was taking a leisurely stroll by the river when I bumped into 30 or 40 teenagers shooting the breeze. I was keeping my head down when one shouted over: “Sir, would you like a can?”

All very respectful. I politely declined, had a quick chat and moved on. You wouldn’t have got a cigarette paper between some of them. Does anyone seriously think that distancing can work in a school setting?

Schools will take all reasonable precautions.

Talk of splitting classes and reducing numbers in groups is almost impossible.

In St Pat’s, Navan, where I am principal, there are more than 900 students with 17 subject options for fifth and sixth years, of which they all do seven. So students may be with completely different groups for each class of the day. That can’t be changed. So school must proceed more or less as normal.

That is not to say there won’t be procedures in place. There will be temperature checks, hand sanitisers, visors for teachers, a one-way system, an isolation area, and other practical measures. But boys will be boys no matter what extra supervision is in place.

In reality, if you can keep Covid out of a school, then students can mix whatever way they want. So parents, students and teachers have a huge responsibility to be careful about their movements.

We will have to err on the side of caution when it comes to coughs or sneezes. Almost every day during the winter, a student will go home as they are not feeling well. Now they will have to stay home rather than adopt my own advice, which is usually for them to go school and they will get over it.

Teachers who are vulnerable may have genuine concerns and they will have to be protected as best as possible, but the show must go on.

School is about interaction, the learning of respect, tolerance, empathy and, most of all, having fun. That is only possible in the melting pot of the school environment. School is also about sport, music, drama, debate and a thousand other little everyday things. The lack of these additional aspects means more stress and anxiety for students and parents who want to get back to work and a halfnormal routine.

There has been plenty to complain about over the response to this problem, but at least now there are funds and a roadmap.

Parents don’t want to hear any more complaints. They want to see we are doing what has been successful in Switzerland, Denmark and many other places. There is no such thing as a no-risk scenario. Time to get on with it.