The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry announced Tuesday guidelines for reopening schools that have been closed due to the new coronavirus. At the end of February, the government had asked elementary, junior high, high and special schools to temporarily close across the board.
Most of the closed schools are set to begin full-fledged preparations for reopening.
However, the schools are required to take extremely careful actions to prevent new infections with the virus, and to respond to delays in students' learning processes caused by the closure. There are piles of tasks to be dealt with.
The guidelines require thorough measures for avoiding three conditions whose simultaneous occurrence raises the risk of group infections: enclosed spaces that are not well ventilated; crowding of people; and conversations at close quarters.
As examples of efforts to be made, the guidelines mention temperature and cold symptom checks every morning; wearing protective masks; and thorough ventilation in school rooms.
The ministry also made a 10-point checklist based on the guidelines and asked schools to utilize the list.
If students, schoolteachers or officials are infected after the reopening of the schools, the ministry calls for school operators, such as local governments, to judge measures to be taken after comprehensively considering how symptoms have developed and how far infections have spread in their regions.
Municipal elementary schools in Kanazawa, which reopened on Monday, earlier than others, have checked whether students have fevers by using noncontact thermometers.
Principal Nobunari Takashima of municipal Kibikino Elementary School said, "Temperature measurements every morning, and other tasks, make teachers' work burdens heavy."
In Otawara, Tochigi Prefecture, elementary and junior high schools had continued classes in the morning even after the government asked all public schools to close in late February. The city's municipal Nishihara Elementary School has conducted all physical exercise classes outdoors as a measure to prevent infections. At lunchtime, students are seated at a distance from one another. On weekends, teachers and others have conducted disinfection in all of the school's rooms.
Nishihara Elementary School has more than 700 students. When the school held a ceremony to mark the end of the school year on Tuesday, the event was divided into three sessions to avoid crowding.
Because of the mass closure and following spring recess, the situation of children not attending school classes will have continued for about one month when the new term starts. That means another task will be helping students to recover from delays in their learning caused by the closure.
In Chiba City, municipal elementary and junior high schools will hold classes to catch up on content the students were unable to cover in school during the closure, after they reopen on April 6. As the measure will delay the normal schedule of classes, the schools are scheduled to shorten summer recess by a week.
However, many schoolteachers have voiced concerns. A vice principal of a municipal elementary school in Osaka City said, "We have not been able to set a clear plan over how to secure time for the classes."
One option to secure class hours is to hold classes on Saturdays. But that raises concern that burdens on students and teachers may be too heavy.
Effects from fears of infection have spread to school's annual plans. A municipal junior high school in Shizuoka City postponed its school excursion to Kyoto and nearby areas, which has been scheduled for May, to October.
Prof. Masaki Watanabe of Tokyo Gakugei University, an expert on health education studies, said: "In the busy period at the start of the school year, schools are required to prevent infections and recover from the delay in learning at the same time. It is necessary to flexibly respond by, for example, obtaining cooperation from parents and local residents for measures to prevent infections."
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
