Education in a covid world
First up: my tuppence on school closures.
As a member of the community with elderly relatives in the vulnerable groups, I've felt that keeping schools open was a potential danger to spreading the virus more quickly. As a teacher, I've actually found myself on the fence as to what was best in the face of growing calls to close schools. This doesn't happen often - usually I am vehemently for or against and no additional perspective will change my mind. This time it's a very different scenario, though.
My indecision was a result of feeling ill informed as to the actual risks posed to me by the "less affected" young people and my colleagues whilst also being concerned over the seeming hypocrisy that mass gatherings were to be avoided in general but having 1000 students plus approximately 100 staff convening five days a week was fine. In discussions in the staff room (yes, I am fortunate to work in a school that still has one), the general feeling was that schools needed to close to the benefit of the people that form the wider web of connections that we are at the centre of as a school. The closures of schools across the globe in countries already further along their pandemic journey was also the basis for many arguments - why not nip it in the bud and close the schools before the virus spreads exponentially? In all honesty, I wasn't in the "close schools asap" camp. I think I allowed the portrayal from the media that we were only in real danger if we'd recently travelled to affected areas or been in contact with someone who had travelled to affected areas. I also didn't appreciate how little contact tracing there was in the early days, unlike in other countries such as South Korea.
Personally, I felt it was more a political economic decision not to close schools initially. The experts could only justify their decision by saying children are less gravely affected by the virus and that if schools close, the issue of childcare withdraws people from the workforce and, more importantly, from the frontline workforce of the NHS. This made it feel that education is merely childcare, not a public service in place to prepare generations for the futures they will face. Now while I understood where this argument lay, after all if a single parent nurse is required to stay at home to look after her 7 year old child as the usual support from her parents is now ill-advised, it also made me feel somewhat degraded and devalued. Yet, I don't believe that teachers had the right to call for total school closures in the way that I witnessed on social media without the scientific evidence of its impact (which, it could be argued, appeared to be withheld by the government - although there were all kinds of infographics and quotations floating around, I couldn't ascertain the source of any of them to know they were reliable). These calls were simply being fed by (and feeding) the panic already within society as a result of a lack of information about the virus itself.
As an aside, with school being closed and my technically being a civil servant, I can be redeployed anywhere within public service, within reason. I can become a delivery driver for free school meals; I can become a telephone operative for council services; I can become an online tutor; I can become the equivalent of an office based worker, working from home, planning ahead for the next academic year and working out how to make up for lost time when schools reopen. I know which would be more beneficial to me in my usual work, but if my delivering free school meals or vouchers allows the usual person to look after their children at home, so be it. I know many other teachers would disagree with this stance, but if we don't position ourselves in the best place for the benefit of the wider population, we are not helping the case to limit the spread of the virus as much as possible. As I am currently not displaying symptoms and I don't have children depending on me, I would happily take on a different role in place of someone with either of these circumstances for as long as it is feasible for me to do so. We must help each other.
When school closures were first (finally?) announced, the fact that I needed to keep going into school felt suddenly hypocritical. Again, the lack of detail available when this decision was made public made it a rather frightful 48 hours. Was I being put at risk if I continued to go to school to care for the children of key workers? Was the fact that schools were open for these small numbers a complete contradiction of the reason schools were closing in the first place? To begin with, I'd have argued yes. Up until that point, my particular school had made no real effort to encourage social distancing. A few staff sent an email to the head suggesting that we have a rolling partial closure put in place, e.g. ask two year groups to stay home on Monday, then a different two year groups on Tuesday, and so on. This, in theory, was to free up staff so that we could split the remaining classes into smaller sizes to sit them apart and observe social distancing more effectively. As you might imagine if you work in education in the UK yourself, this wasn't particularly well received. To me, at the time, it made some sense and would allow for a continuity in delivering lessons for longer for the most part. It wasn't perfect by any means. It wasn't solving the problem of increasingly lower staff numbers as self-isolation removed them from being able to come into work so that they avoided potentially passing the virus on to others. But it was a solution that could have reassured an increasingly frightened staff body that continuing to show up every day was the right thing to do for those we serve.
I'll go into the farce and furore of the arrangements in the 48 hours following the announcement in another post. But it was carnage. There is no other word to describe. So many feelings. So many questions. So many changes in such a short amount of time.
I've since come to realise that closing schools had a far wider reaching impact on life as we know it that a lot of us had anticipated beforehand. Exams cancelled. Futures uncertain. Parents unable to work in some cases. Several demographics looking on it as a holiday rather than a necessity for the common good. If behaviour over the weekend after the school gates were locked is anything to go by, the general public has not fully understood why we have had to close our schools. Nor do they fully understand why other countries, ahead of us "on the curve", are now in complete lockdown. Equally, does it demonstrate that our government itself has not learned from what we have witnessed happening in these countries? It's just nice to see that the majority are trying to promote the best foot forward approach, acknowledging the difficulties ahead but reminding us of what we will achieve as a result of these sacrifices.
Our children's education is one of those sacrifices. Let's make it worth it.
We are all in unchartered territory right now.
Be kind. Stay safe.
As a member of the community with elderly relatives in the vulnerable groups, I've felt that keeping schools open was a potential danger to spreading the virus more quickly. As a teacher, I've actually found myself on the fence as to what was best in the face of growing calls to close schools. This doesn't happen often - usually I am vehemently for or against and no additional perspective will change my mind. This time it's a very different scenario, though.
My indecision was a result of feeling ill informed as to the actual risks posed to me by the "less affected" young people and my colleagues whilst also being concerned over the seeming hypocrisy that mass gatherings were to be avoided in general but having 1000 students plus approximately 100 staff convening five days a week was fine. In discussions in the staff room (yes, I am fortunate to work in a school that still has one), the general feeling was that schools needed to close to the benefit of the people that form the wider web of connections that we are at the centre of as a school. The closures of schools across the globe in countries already further along their pandemic journey was also the basis for many arguments - why not nip it in the bud and close the schools before the virus spreads exponentially? In all honesty, I wasn't in the "close schools asap" camp. I think I allowed the portrayal from the media that we were only in real danger if we'd recently travelled to affected areas or been in contact with someone who had travelled to affected areas. I also didn't appreciate how little contact tracing there was in the early days, unlike in other countries such as South Korea.
Personally, I felt it was more a political economic decision not to close schools initially. The experts could only justify their decision by saying children are less gravely affected by the virus and that if schools close, the issue of childcare withdraws people from the workforce and, more importantly, from the frontline workforce of the NHS. This made it feel that education is merely childcare, not a public service in place to prepare generations for the futures they will face. Now while I understood where this argument lay, after all if a single parent nurse is required to stay at home to look after her 7 year old child as the usual support from her parents is now ill-advised, it also made me feel somewhat degraded and devalued. Yet, I don't believe that teachers had the right to call for total school closures in the way that I witnessed on social media without the scientific evidence of its impact (which, it could be argued, appeared to be withheld by the government - although there were all kinds of infographics and quotations floating around, I couldn't ascertain the source of any of them to know they were reliable). These calls were simply being fed by (and feeding) the panic already within society as a result of a lack of information about the virus itself.
As an aside, with school being closed and my technically being a civil servant, I can be redeployed anywhere within public service, within reason. I can become a delivery driver for free school meals; I can become a telephone operative for council services; I can become an online tutor; I can become the equivalent of an office based worker, working from home, planning ahead for the next academic year and working out how to make up for lost time when schools reopen. I know which would be more beneficial to me in my usual work, but if my delivering free school meals or vouchers allows the usual person to look after their children at home, so be it. I know many other teachers would disagree with this stance, but if we don't position ourselves in the best place for the benefit of the wider population, we are not helping the case to limit the spread of the virus as much as possible. As I am currently not displaying symptoms and I don't have children depending on me, I would happily take on a different role in place of someone with either of these circumstances for as long as it is feasible for me to do so. We must help each other.
When school closures were first (finally?) announced, the fact that I needed to keep going into school felt suddenly hypocritical. Again, the lack of detail available when this decision was made public made it a rather frightful 48 hours. Was I being put at risk if I continued to go to school to care for the children of key workers? Was the fact that schools were open for these small numbers a complete contradiction of the reason schools were closing in the first place? To begin with, I'd have argued yes. Up until that point, my particular school had made no real effort to encourage social distancing. A few staff sent an email to the head suggesting that we have a rolling partial closure put in place, e.g. ask two year groups to stay home on Monday, then a different two year groups on Tuesday, and so on. This, in theory, was to free up staff so that we could split the remaining classes into smaller sizes to sit them apart and observe social distancing more effectively. As you might imagine if you work in education in the UK yourself, this wasn't particularly well received. To me, at the time, it made some sense and would allow for a continuity in delivering lessons for longer for the most part. It wasn't perfect by any means. It wasn't solving the problem of increasingly lower staff numbers as self-isolation removed them from being able to come into work so that they avoided potentially passing the virus on to others. But it was a solution that could have reassured an increasingly frightened staff body that continuing to show up every day was the right thing to do for those we serve.
I'll go into the farce and furore of the arrangements in the 48 hours following the announcement in another post. But it was carnage. There is no other word to describe. So many feelings. So many questions. So many changes in such a short amount of time.
I've since come to realise that closing schools had a far wider reaching impact on life as we know it that a lot of us had anticipated beforehand. Exams cancelled. Futures uncertain. Parents unable to work in some cases. Several demographics looking on it as a holiday rather than a necessity for the common good. If behaviour over the weekend after the school gates were locked is anything to go by, the general public has not fully understood why we have had to close our schools. Nor do they fully understand why other countries, ahead of us "on the curve", are now in complete lockdown. Equally, does it demonstrate that our government itself has not learned from what we have witnessed happening in these countries? It's just nice to see that the majority are trying to promote the best foot forward approach, acknowledging the difficulties ahead but reminding us of what we will achieve as a result of these sacrifices.
Our children's education is one of those sacrifices. Let's make it worth it.
We are all in unchartered territory right now.
Be kind. Stay safe.
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