Increase School Cleaning

Invest in school cleaning, change cleaning schedules to a daily clean, give cleaning staff adequate equipment, time, and staff to do a thorough job.

Many schools in Scotland were on a woefully inadequate cleaning schedule before lockdown, with a ‘2 Day Clean’ meaning cleaning a classroom every other day and only emptying bins on a Friday. When schools reopen, there needs to be daily cleaning of classroom surfaces, corridors and other shared areas. I’m sure this would require more cleaning staff and cost money, but people’s lives are at stake here, and we cannot tell children to wash hands regularly and keep clean, then not clean the surfaces they touch.
My experience is that cleaning staff hate a 2 day clean, and know that it is inadequate. They would far rather clean each room each day, but don’t have the human resources to do so. In light of Covid-19, councils need to support daily cleans of classrooms and common areas in schools and invest in the spaces young people are using. They also have a duty of care to their staff, and if classrooms aren’t cleaned daily, then those staff may suffer the consequences. And the consequences are so much more serious than they were before.