School staff and pupil safety

Schools should not reopen until there is effective testing for all pupils and staff.
The age many members of school staff, teachers and support staff, is well over 40, putting them into a risk group by age.
In classrooms teachers can ensure pupil safety be following the relevant guidelines, however while moving between classrooms, in the corridors, social distancing will be very difficult to implement, even with reduced numbers moving at any one time.
Also, while travelling to and from school, in an unsupervised time period especially where secondary schools are concerned, it is highly unlikely all our young people will see the need to comply with social distancing

Why the contribution is important

Given how infectious this virus is, the time delay between catching it and showing any symptoms, how young teenagers respond/interact with each other and the physical design of schools, to start teaching and learning before there are testing procedures in place to track the spread of the virus in schools appears to me to be driven by other considerations than pupil and staff safety.
The spread of the virus in care homes has shown how quickly this virus can spread in institutions, the residents in care homes are not moving about on the streets, visiting shops during the lunchtime and doing all the other times young people do when unsupervised by adults.

by johncthomson on May 06, 2020 at 07:25AM

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