Now even that is threatened. Students in the UK would return on Monday from the Christmas holidays. But less than a week ago, the government announced that the return to school would be two weeks for almost all high school students and some elementary school children. Learning will move online. On Sunday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson conceded that schools may have to close indefinitely.
In Germany, schools switched to distance education again in mid-December as the number of infections increased, with a decision on the future ahead. And in Ireland and Spain, teachers’ unions and some local leaders are calling on federal governments to delay the return to school.
British business is growing rapidly, forcing millions of people to join the ranks. Children of school-going age are infected higher than before, and scientists are concerned that a new variant of the virus, which can be more easily transmitted, is helping to boost the spread.
And the variant has been found in at least 15 other European countries, including Sweden, France, Spain and Switzerland. It has also been identified in at least 14 outside the region, including the US, China and Australia.
A two-week delay in returning to school may seem insignificant to Americans in cities where schools are closed in front of pubs, restaurants and gyms. But in Europe, closing schools is widely seen as a last resort.
But some of these dynamics can change. In the earlier stages of the pandemic, data showed significantly lower infection rates in children than adults. In the UK, high school children are the age group with the highest infection rate. However, infant mortality remains extremely rare.
The survey is not conclusive, but Ladhani says his team does not find much evidence of transfer between students in close contact.
“There are not many outbreaks where, for example, six children in the same bubble become infected on a timeline where you think they have transmitted it to each other,” Ladhani said.
Government guidelines recommend that English schools form ‘bubbles’ or’ groups’ to limit their pupils’ number of contacts with each other.
“We know that infection occurs in children of school-going age. What we do not know is the dynamics of the infection, whether it occurs at school or outside schools or at home,” the epidemiologist said.
Scientists are investigating whether school children are more likely to distribute the new Covid-19 variant than the previous one.
To close or not to close?
Some teachers and medical experts in the UK argue that the closure of schools is not only the result of the new variant, but the government’s failure to advance the virus and make schools safe enough to resist it. Premier Johnson told the BBC on Sunday that “there is no doubt that schools are safe.” He added that children have a ‘very, very low’ risk, compared to the benefit of school being ‘so big’.
“This kind of mass testing will not only help protect children and young people, but it will benefit everyone in the community as it will break the transmission chains that increase the infection rates. This in turn will make it safer for more children to physically return to school. then, ‘Williamson said.
“This delay and disruption of children’s education is a direct result of the government’s failure. They have lost control of the virus. Now they are losing control of children’s education,” Green said.
It warned that there was too much expectation that vaccines, which are now being administered in the UK and much of Europe, would return to normal immediately.
“This is not the miracle bullet. We are in a very serious situation,” said the group’s chairman, David King, a former government scientific adviser.
In a discussion on Wednesday last week, he warned that herd immunity could only be achieved through vaccination by the end of the year. It is also only when enough people choose to be vaccinated.
In a paper, Independent SAGE calls for improvements in safety regulations in schools. It points out that the current rules say that an entire high school year group of up to 240 people can be considered a ‘bubble’, which recommends much lower limits for the number of contacts students have. In elementary school, it recommends bubbles from three or four children.
It also calls for resources to improve ventilation, to reduce class sizes and to encourage more mixed or hybrid learning, where students can study part of the term at a distance to reduce the number of people on the premises at any given time.
This is a sentiment shared by many teachers, including one from the Midlands of England who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity. He suffers from long Covid himself – with chest pains and constant feelings of fatigue – and says he and his colleagues felt that the government ‘threw us under the bus’.
“The problems also come from the fact that governments have not funded schools properly for many years,” he said. He described his school building as a narrow corridor that makes one-way systems impossible, and full of classrooms with poor ventilation.
“You can have 2,000 people in a building, or 30 people in one closed classroom. You can not just rely on opening a window.”
However, some teachers are concerned about the closure of the school and fear that the delay of two weeks could be extended.
David Perks, principal of East London Science School, said he wanted his school to reopen as soon as possible as he saw the challenges facing online learning during England’s first exclusion.
“Since then, we have kept it open and we want to stay open,” he told CNN, although he and Covid-19 himself contracted it last year. He said that although the infection rates were high, he did not see many teachers or students in his school becoming seriously ill.
“It is much more important that we stay open to the pupils. If we do not continue in the new year, the whole examination system is in doubt and the future for which the pupils work is suddenly in doubt,” he said.
“Children only achieve their best if they rush to the finish line of exams. If it is taken away from them, they cannot push themselves. They will lose confidence in the system and fall back.”
‘It was boring to be glued to a screen’
Seventh-grader Andaru Jensen is worried about the same thing. His final school exam was scrapped last year, which he regrets.
“I think sometimes I get scared when I lose some of the things I learned. I can not remember everything I learned, and I think, ‘I drop? Am I not that good at class? Like. I was earlier? ‘he said.
He does not mind studying from home for another two weeks – especially since he will get an extra hour of sleep – but he does not want to study online for too long.
“After the first week in the last exclusion, it was really hard to keep myself motivated. It was boring to be glued to a screen for so many hours and do the same thing over and over.”
He said he is not too worried about Covid-19. He understands that there is a risk that he may get it, but he knows that he is in a low-risk group and would rather be in school than to miss personal training and see his friends.
But many parents feel anxious, some about the potential risk of infection, or vice versa about the stress of balancing hours of childcare while working.
Alan Tilmouth, who has a 13-year-old twin at school in the North English county of Northumberland, is such a parent, who says the government’s safety regulations for schools are “weak, ineffective or non-existent.”
But ask parents in Italy, who have started school again and again throughout 2020, and many will say they are desperate for their children to have the same sense of normality that many had in other parts of Europe.
Italy is trying to start a staggering reopening of schools next week, but there is nervousness that infections will increase and schools may close again.
“Overall, I believe our children – and even more so, teenagers – are unfairly paying the highest price for a disease that basically does not affect them,” said Mario Fusco, a 46-year-old software developer in Lombardy. . He and his wife went home to their 9-year-old daughter for months last year.
“Every morning around 08:00 I walk with my dog before I start work, and I see 80-year-old people enter the metro station near my place, while [the government has been] which prohibits boys and girls from going to school. The first thing we did here in Lombardy in February was near schools, ‘he said.
“Italy is not a country for young people.”
CNN’s Mick Krever and journalists Nicola Ruotolo and Benjamin Berteau contributed to this report.