How can parents support school re-openings?

By Pat McKelvey Cork Education and Training Board's Director of Schools

 

In homes the length and breadth of the country, parents and students are preparing to return to primary and post primary schools.

Many students are excited about the prospect of returning to school and re-engaging with their friends and their learning. Even more parents are delighted at the prospect of returning the task of educating their child to the trained professionals.

However, for many students and their parents, there is an unusual level of apprehension this year. For others, the usual level of stress and anxiety that starting or returning to school involves, is multiplied in the current situation.

For children with additional needs and those who are immunocompromised, there is the added concern as to how their needs can be adequately met in the current situation.

The Department of Education have invested considerable resources in supporting schools to reopen in a safe way. Additional funding to support minor school works, additional staffing and enhanced cleaning regimes have been provided to schools. School leaders have been deploying these resources in preparation for the reopening of their schools.

These resources have been an essential and valuable assistance to schools. However, they are just the first piece in what is a very large jigsaw for our school leaders.

Each school has put in place a Covid-19 response plan to manage the return to school and how the school day will operate. Procedures have been developed to manage every aspect of the school day: how staff and students enter and leave the school each day, how staff and students move between classes, how social spaces are organised at breaktimes, if and how school canteen areas will operate, the use of toilet facilities etc. In addition, each school has had to put procedures in place around how to manage staff and students that are ill or become ill during the school day.

This is before we even begin to consider the changes that are required within the classroom; changes which will impact in a very significant way on how learning takes place and how teachers and students interact in the classroom.

In effect, every aspect of school life will have been modified or changed in some form or another. This is all being done in an environment which is evolving and where the guidelines under which schools are expected to operate are evolving.

While the measures that all schools are taking will substantially reduce the risk of any member of the school community getting the virus as a result of being in the school environment, it simply will not be possible for any school, irrespective of the level of detailed planning it has done, to completely eliminate all risk.

Our ability to keep Covid-19 out of our schools will depend on everyone in the school community; school leaders, staff students and parents following the procedures developed by the school and adhering to the rules that are put in place. It will also require everyone, with allowance for certain groups of children, taking personal responsibility for their own safety and that of others in the school community.

During the weekend, the Chair of the NPHET modelling group, Prof. Phillip Nolan, stated that there will be clusters in schools, but that it is likely that such cases will have been contracted at home, rather than in schools themselves. The Department of Education will be issuing guidance to schools on how to deal with this situation.

It is important to bear in mind that should such an eventuality arise, school leaders and boards of management will follow and act on the HSE Public Health advice and direction.

Professor Nolan’s comments also point to the absolute necessity to keep the virus suppressed in the local community if we are to keep it out of our schools.