Take our schools out of lockdown
AS A teacher, I never agreed with the closure of schools during lockdown. I favoured the Swedish approach: restrictions on movement, but classes stayed open. It is impossible to isolate the virus from the classroom. There is always coughing, sneezing, belching, spitting — the virus will find its way back to the classroom no matter what we do. The epidemiologists tell us we must build up herd immunity. Well, schoolchildren are the best group for developing this, given their low susceptibility to the virus, so I don’t understand the insistence on social distancing at schools. The elderly and their carers should be the focus of quarantine and lockdown, not schools. We are robbing our children of an education. In Australia, the children in nursery schools stand in line holding each others’ hands as they walk into class and they play together happily. So why can’t we do the same? My plea to the Government and teacher unions is please open the schools. The sooner we all get back to work the better.
SIMON W. GILBERT, March, Cambs. WHY do some people think teachers are having a great holiday (Letters)? My daughter is a deputy head and hasn’t had a day off during the pandemic. She worked through Easter and the bank holidays because key workers’ children and those with special needs were going to school. She had to organise and police safe areas for these children. Now the little ones have gone back, my daughter’s school has had to set up 16 separate areas, each with its own designated teacher, and there are staggered starting times, play times and dinner times to preserve social distancing.
S. CAIN, Huddersfield, W. Yorks. AS A grandmother, I am worried that most children will not be returning to school before September. How will they be able to catch up on their education? I fear the lack of the discipline of school life and social interaction will have deep psychological effects.
SUSAN PYM, Yarm, N. Yorks. WHY is the Government being criticised for failing to re-open the schools when unions were instructing teachers not to go back to work because it was unsafe? Schools can’t magically tack on extra classrooms and rustle up more teachers.
CAROLE RICHES, Blackpool.
THERE is no need to worry about children missing months of school. Despite two 40-minute lessons of French every week for five years, I can only remember how to count to ten. I recall just one geography lesson in which I was taught how to use a barometer to gauge the weather, which I still do to this day. Chemistry? It’s dangerous. Biology? Cutting open a bull’s eye made me queasy. The apprentices I trained would have benefited more from being taught basic arithmetic at school rather than advanced mathematics. That would have meant they could work out basic quantities, including their pay packet. Most teenage pupils could leave school to do a useful job, with only the technically minded staying on to become nurses, doctors and engineers.
TONY BALL, High Wycombe, Bucks.