THE start of a new school year is always a significant moment for children, but never more so than this year. When schools in England, the US and many other nations reopen their doors this September, it will be the first time in months that the majority of children have stepped foot in a classroom.
These children have made a big sacrifice in our fight against the coronavirus. Many teachers have made heroic efforts to suddenly switch to remote learning, but there is no doubt that pupils’ education has been affected. The pandemic has also prevented progress in closing the gap in academic achievement between the most disadvantaged children in England and their peers. Those disadvantaged children are now more than 18 months behind by the time they are 16, on average.
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Because of this, there is wide agreement that schools must reopen, and stay open. Achieving this is fraught with unknowns, however (see “Coronavirus: How to keep children and staff safe when schools reopen”). Although it seems that children are less likely to transmit and get sick from the coronavirus, we don’t know why that is the case. Should an outbreak occur, pupils’ families and school staff could still be at risk.
In order to keep schools safe, governments must be prepared to shut down other areas of society to keep overall levels of virus transmission low. If parents return to travelling, en masse, on crowded commuter lines, that will vastly increase their likelihood of catching the coronavirus and passing it to their children. If large groups begin to gather in pubs and restaurants, or choose to go to parties inside private spaces, the same applies.
“To keep schools safe, we must be prepared to shut down other areas of society to keep overall virus transmission low”
This all means that managing the virus necessitates that politicians must be agile, and unafraid of U-turns. In England, a row over pupils wearing face coverings (see “Coronavirus: Should children returning to school wear face coverings?”) saw the UK government spend weeks denying it would change its policy of not requiring them, only to eventually cave in shortly before schools opened. This is a time for the grown-ups to have grown-up conversations about the difficult realities of reopening schools, so that children can get on and learn.
