It’s so good to see my students back in school. And it’s great to conduct lessons face-to-face, after months of being shackled to a computer screen.
We’ve all taken a big step towards the old normal, but how long it will continue depends on far more than voluminous risk assessments, high doses of antiviral spray everywhere and incessant handwashing.
Articles on this website and posts on social media reflect not just high levels of satisfaction at having achieved the return, but also indications of a long battle ahead if we are going to keep schools open as Covid infections rise.
One of the most distasteful things I’ve seen is examples of formal letters to schools, threatening legal action if children are forced to wear masks or use antiviral spray.
It’s understandable that children with skin and respiratory conditions will need special arrangements. In my experience, schools work very hard to support families with health issues. No one wants to impose suffering on the pupils who have to contend with health problems, especially when keeping these conditions under control is so hard.
An us-and-them mindset
But the assumptions behind the communications are unhelpful, to say the least. Such an us-and-them mindset draws battle lines. The heavy artillery of lawyers lined up behind the parents and targeting senior management is the most obvious sign of disunity. Sympathetic negotiation would have been far more productive.
In a national emergency, it’s relatively easy to enforce compliance through clear rules - as long as society is in agreement about the level of danger posed to its members. How else could we have sustained lockdown, with all its damage to the wellbeing of vulnerable people and impact on job prospects?
But now that the level of threat appears lower, evening press conferences have been abandoned, and Covid coverage is on the backburner in news programmes, it’s all too easy to believe that the danger has passed - whatever the scientists warn us.
And rules seem so unnecessarily complicated - contradictory, even - that for adults there’s more pleasure to be gained from satirising and disregarding them than from implementing them.
More vigilance from the community
This leaves schools in a very difficult position. Parents want total reassurance, which will allow them to deposit their children, the responsibility for infection control and their anxieties at the school gate.
But viruses don’t respect such boundaries. Pupils may already carry infection from their parents and friends. So schools need more vigilance from the community.
In order to keep teaching, teachers are highly dependent on cooperation from their charges. Pupils know what bubbles are, and they know about handwashing. But what is most worrying is that, like their parents, they expect teachers to do all the work in maintaining a safe environment.
It’s possible to enforce the rules face-to-face; it’s what goes on while teachers aren’t present that is the issue.
Even older children don’t understand the rationale behind bubbles. They believe that a bubble is a safe enclosure, rather than a fragile entity, and that once inside they can carry on as normal with no regard for social distancing.
A potential life-or-death situation
Government guidance does little - if anything - to help schools enforce safe behaviour. It doesn’t impose the same level of obligation on students as adults to maintain distancing, even though students will pose an increasing risk of infection.
School leaders are told: “Whatever the size of the group, they should be kept apart from other groups where possible and older children should be encouraged to keep their distance within groups”.
It’s all so indirect and contingent. What do we mean by “where possible”? Who decides what is and is not possible? And how do schools encourage older children, who could well be infected and asymptomatic, to keep their distance? We’re not talking about a lifestyle choice but a potential life-or-death situation, if social distancing is not maintained.
In a national emergency, the unequivocal punchy slogans worked. This vapid “guidance” governing the behaviour of children won’t have much effect - other than to dump all the responsibility on exhausted headteachers.
A responsibility for all of us
We may get away with the deeply unsatisfactory arrangements for now, as windows are open in classrooms and outdoor exercise is the order of the day. But as the weather gets colder we will all be indoors much more, and the virus will be able to spread more rapidly.
Teachers are more vulnerable to infection than their charges. They may be too embarrassed to say so, but older teachers are more likely to become ill - even dangerously or fatally ill.
Secondary teachers crossing many bubbles will drag large numbers into quarantine if they succumb to the virus. It would be enlightened self-interest for students to protect themselves and these key members of the school community if they want to avoid more online learning.
Schools need much more from pupils and parents than simple compliance with the obvious aspects of the rules. What will keep us much safer are moral values that impose responsibility on all of us, not just for our own welfare but for those around us.
Parents who take the time to explain to their children the importance of social distancing and caring for others will be doing their bit to keep schools open. Their children will be self-regulating, considerate and independent. It’s something schools will happily reinforce.
I’m not advocating a rigidly rule-bound society. Dictatorship by consent can only last so long. Only the strong community values of cooperation and consideration will keep us all safe.
Yvonne Williams is head of English and drama in a secondary school in the South of England. She has contributed chapters on workload and wellbeing to Mentoring English Teachers in the Secondary School, edited by Debbie Hickman (Routledge)
