Safety first
Fears of teachers and parents ahead of school return
Teachers in Scarborough are preparing for at least a third of parents to defy the Government’s request to send their children back to school from June 1, amid safety fears.
Headteachers have been conducting surveys to gauge how many of the Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 children eligible to return on June 1 will be back. Primary schools have been coming up with ways to meet the Government’s requirements, including class sizes of no more than 15, and flexible attendance.
Around the country, a growing number of schools and councils are defying the Government request for a phased return to school from June 1.
A recent survey we conducted of The Scarborough News readers has shown that the majority who responded are uncomfortable with sending their children back to school in early June.
Our lockdown survey, published on The Scarborough News website as well as 150 others across the UK last week, asked readers 25 questions about how the coronavirus crisis has shaped the lives, opinions and habits of people in Scarborough – and what they’d like to see happen in the coming weeks and months.
One of the questions focused on children, asking readers whether they would feel comfortable about their kids going back to school in early June. Over 22 countries across Europe including Denmark, Germany and France have partly reopened schools over the past month with measures in place to mitigate against the spread of the virus.
We can now reveal how people in Scarborough felt about the potential reopening of schools.
The largest category – 44% – was of people who felt ‘not at all comfortable’ about their kids returning to school in early June, with readers who felt ‘slightly comfortable’ in the minority, at 13%.
On a national level, almost half – 44.7% – of respondents said they felt ‘not at all comfortable’ with their children returning to school in early June, which is the timeframe the Prime Minister has announced for England.
Around one fifth of respondents – 19.3% – feel ‘not very comfortable’ about the
idea, with just 17.4% saying they feel ‘very comfortable’ and 16.9% saying they feel ‘slightly comfortable’.
When asked which element of everyday life they were most looking forward to as restrictions ease, “your children going back to school” was presented as
one of the options.
Just 12% of readers in Scarborough said that they were looking forward to this.
On a national level, just 16% of respondents said they were looking forward to their kids going back to school.
The most popular option was seeing family, which 77.2% of respondents nationally said they were looking forward to.
The everyday activity readers in Scarborough are looking forward to most is seeing family with 72% of participants choosing this option.
Our readers have also voiced their opinion on how clear the Government’s advice has been during lockdown.
Since Boris Johnson’s announcement detailing the next phase of the coronavirus strategy, much of the critcism levelled at the Government has been over the clarity of the new Stay Alert message.
Prior to this change, when asked how clear the UK Government’s lockdown guidance had been, the majority of our readers who took part in the survey responded ‘quite clear’.
The national average on this issue was: 30% said ‘very clear’, 35% said ‘quite clear’, 22% said ‘not very clear’ and 14% said ‘not at all clear’.