Recovery, Renewal, Resilience

The impact of school closures, especially nursery and primary schools, carries high social and economic costs as learning is interrupted, parents are unprepared for home schooling and for the impacts this has on childcare. Working parents may have no choice but to leave children alone when they have to work, or to miss work to take care of their children. This can impact child nutrition, social isolation and increase children's exposure to violence and exploitation. Schools in Denmark, China, Korea and Taiwan, have begun to open. In Korea, the government has incorporated the concept of digital classrooms into current educational legislation to develop a 'future-orientated' approach to online education.

A number of measures for adjusting the school day have been identified:

• Consider staggering the school day so children arrive in different time blocks. In Demark the start and end of the school day is split into three 15-minute windows, and the day finishes at 2pm to reduce risk of new rules feeling oppressive. This helps reduce crowding at the school gates
• Parents are not allowed inside the building and must collect their children at outside while observing social distancing rules- consider marking lines, and creating one-way systems for parents to collect children in playgrounds
• Consider rotating year groups into schools for a week at a time
• Consider changes to lesson delivery e.g. restrict movement of teachers one teacher per class. Consider how this may impact which classes teachers will need to deliver and how this can be effectively timetabled. Also consider making class sizes smaller by splitting classes in two and have taught rotas between staff
• Limit handling of children's books through increased self-marking activities
• Provide allocated desks to each child with social distancing requirements in place. Be pragmatic and realistic about how to ensure social distancing when children are not at their desks, e.g. how they will traverse corridors or stairways, how to manage behaviour at break times
• Consider reducing creative activities such as art, and 'carpet time' for primary school children. Or requesting personal supplies i.e. scissors or paintbrushes are brought in. Consider how creative classes can be taken outdoors to make learning fun, and safer
• Stagger lunch breaks and class times to avoid the risk of too many people moving through the school at one time

Alongside restructuring the school day, re-opening of schools requires attention to infrastructure. This may include:

• Installing additional handwashing facilities so children have to wash hands before entering school and then throughout the day - in Denmark children wash their hands six to eight times a day
• Measure temperatures before students are allowed on site. In China some schools have installed a system at the entrance of the school to record temperatures. Any person displaying a temperature above 37.3 degrees is taken for further temperature checks
• Installing hand sanitisation stations and bins for discarded masks in and around the school site. China also has isolation areas should anyone be taken ill during the course of the day
• Utilising additional buildings such as church halls or community centres if the school does not have the required space to maintain social distancing and its cohort of students
• Accounting for reduced workforce availability due to illness, and PPE requirements

There is an urgency to return pupils to schools to support their health and well-being and to relieve pressures on working families who may be experiencing increased financial hardship as a result of having children at home. It is important that robust scientific evidence is used to make such decisions; a study from Germany found children were as likely to spread coronavirus as adults which suggests caution is required. However, lessons from Denmark, China and Taiwan could provide useful insights into practical adaptation and innovation to support a safe return to school.

To read this case study in its original format with references etc., follow the source link to TMB Issue 7 p.16-17.