The teachers and unions have recently shared their criticisms of the last minute decision of the government regarding the delay about the beginning of time for all secondary schools. The same goes for several primary schools as well in England. The Vice President of the ASCL headteacher’s Union, Pepe Di’lasio had further commented that the ministers have been notified about this prior. He has even told the BBC news that we have witnessed such a scenario to be approaching, and thus, we could have planned about it earlier, before the last term itself.
The Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has said that some of the primary schools located in the hotspots of Covid 19 shall remain closed, and this counts up to 15% of the schools. The General secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, Paul Whiteman has called up on the ministers to elaborate his decisions on the concern of the primary schools that shall remain open. He has further labelled the dost allergy of the government as “keep calm and carry on.” He added on to it saying that he is really concerned about the safety of the schools to be opened in some of the tier 4 areas and thus, there has been an order with a few of those schools in the tier 4 areas itself to move to remote learning.
Department for Education taking up the concern
The department for Education spokesman said that the decisions about the areas that will be subject to this contingency framework will be based on close provision and note with that of the NHS, PHE and the Joint Biosecurity centre. It shall also be brought under the notice of the government regarding the number of new infections found within the close proximity of the school, and the rates of patients turning out to be positive and other related issues. All these measures shall be reviewed every 2 weeks and thus, the official said that they have been expecting to see themselves getting through the situation.
Even in the last month of the year, the government had asked the schools to commence setting up mass testing programmes for January but the professionals had declared that the timescale wasn’t workable, and thus, they would set online classes for everyone for the upcoming term. To this, Mr De Blasio has said that they have been well aware about the fact that there is going to be a peak and surge in the month of January and thus, the teachers should have made preparations for them to take their exams until and unless the things are getting back to normal. A lot of parents are also susceptible about the situation and thus, they said that with this duration, the government should focus on coming up with vaccines that will help the kids stay safe and return back to school after the span gets over.