As a teacher who unwittingly chose to change schools in the midst of a pandemic, I have a unique opportunity to see the vast differences in approaches that secondary schools are taking towards keeping their staff and students safe in September (Letters, 26 July).
While my old school has completely changed the timetable to make sure there is little interaction between year-group bubbles and to keep breaks and lunches the same, my new school has made few changes and simply reduced break times to 15 minutes and lunches to 20 minutes to accommodate staggered breaks, with no time in between for cleaning.
And while my old school is going to great lengths to make sure that equipment isn’t a hazard for anyone, my new school is completely inconsistent with its policies – textbooks cannot be used by the same class in a 72-hour period, but exercise books still need to marked regularly by teachers. It’s just another example of how pointless and unhelpful the guidance for schools reopening has been.
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