Schools - Reopening

Provide clarity to parents, many of whom are attempting to work from home AND fulfil the duties of a teacher at the same time, when schools will reopen and what this will look like. Re-evaluate whether expecting parents to teach children whilst maintaining a job working from home is reasonable, suitable or fair.

The concept of " a blend of school and in-home learning long term " significantly disadvantages working parents who cannot always home school their children and maintain a reasonable pattern of working. Even when these parents may be able to teach their children, this is a significantly reduced subset of their usual education and risks these children falling far behind classmates of non-working or furloughed parents. The pressure by Employers for parents to do a full day work, often needing to be on long conference calls, video calls, or have periods where they cannot be interrupted, and doing this for several months can have a serious mental health effect on those parents whilst trying to care for young children.

If schools don't reopen until August, the out of school/holiday clubs on which many parents rely on for (partial) summer holiday cover will also remain shut, adding another 7 weeks to the current conditions.

We all need to learn to live with a level of risk - reopening schools before summer, but having mechanisms in place to shut them down in a localised area if required, would allow education to resume and a large part of the workforce to resume, whilst having a positive mental health impact on a large proportion of the population. Even opening schools for the youngest children (P1-5, for example), would allow classes to be spread out and some semblance of physical distancing to be observed.