As a teacher and a parent, I was shocked by your report (School closures likely to have little impact on spread of coronavirus, study finds, 7 April). The authors of the study discussed in it clearly have little understanding of how schools actually work.
The study seems to assume the only people in schools are children. A typical secondary school has about 100 teaching staff and about 100 support staff. That’s 200 adults, many of whom will be asthmatic, diabetic or have cancer, or live with people who are in those groups. All these adults – as well as the children – can catch and spread coronavirus.
The idea of social distancing in classrooms is laughable. Most schools would need to double the classrooms to make this work. The idea of shutting playgrounds is profoundly wrong. Pupils need to have breaks, get outside and run around. If playgrounds are shut, what should a big school do? Stick all the pupils in the gym or assembly hall? How does the two-metre rule work then?
Lastly, how are these pupils meant to travel to school? On crammed buses needed by key workers to get to work, driven by bus drivers, who once again will all be put at risk. It’s important that the education community debunks this nonsense.
Jeremy Taylor
South Norwood, London
• The UCL study on which you report makes a valid point: the clinical impact of the virus on schoolchildren is relatively low. But its authors seem to have forgotten one thing: it isn’t children who run schools.
I’m part of our school’s skeleton-staff rota, which exists to ensure key workers’ children can be looked after. As a young, healthy teacher with no dependants, I’m happy to do this, but many of my colleagues aren’t in that boat. Several are high-risk, with existing medical conditions. Some are pregnant. A handful are over 70. I wouldn’t want a single one of them anywhere near the building.
So long as the advice to the general population remains that we all stay at home, it would be nonsensical to remove social distancing expectations for school staff only. Especially when so many of them are providing such comprehensive online learning alternatives. And no, nothing can adequately replace face-to-face interactions when it comes to a child’s education, but there are bigger fish to fry right now.
Caiti Walter Secondary school teacher
Tooting, London
• As an experienced primary school teacher, may I suggest how schools might be reopened? Children usually sit close together in classrooms. There is an increasing emphasis on working together and moving around the teaching area rather than sitting at a desk for more formal teaching. This makes lessons more engaging but increases interpersonal contact.
To reduce contact, each class could be divided into two groups. One group would attend every morning and have an early lunch before going home. There would be an interval to allow for cleaning before the afternoon group arrived. The same teacher would teach each small class every session while the split school day was in operation. Other precautions could be implemented, such as ensuring each child uses their own set of equipment rather than sharing crayons etc.
The teaching in school would necessarily be quite formal in order to minimise contact. However, children could be given instructions and resources to do creative activities at home, possibly related to the topics covered in school. The teachers might make themselves available online to students and parents for some of the time outside their session.
Penny McCulloch
Balsall Common, West Midlands
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