Children, parents and teachers are adjusting to “new normal” education

Many children over the world go back to school for the first time in months.

Optimistic and excited after month of being forced to stay at home, they greeted with joy their friends that they had not seen for so long; they excitedly began to tell teachers about their adventures during lockdown or summer holiday and they showed their eagerness to make up for missed classes earlier due to the pandemic.

UN states that it’s urgent to get kids back to schools after months of lockdown. Governments are nevertheless taking different strategies toward the new school year, depending on the number of infections, the state of their health care systems and political considerations.

Let’s take a look at what “going (or not going…) back to school” looks like in different countries.

ASIA

Schools will remain shut for the moment in India, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Nepal and partially in Japan and Sri Lanka. In Thailand and Malaysia they reopened in July and August. Indonesian schools reopened in July with half-capacity classes and limited hours. Most of Chinese students had already returned to class from August. In Philippines schools are rescheduled to open in October, but only remote-learning classes will be allowed.

EUROPE

France is sending all its pupils back to classrooms from September. French government wants to overpass inequalities for children worsened by the lockdown and also get more parents back to work. All teachers, middle school and high school students will have to wear masks all day.

German children are already back to school. In spite of some outbreaks due to summer vacations, Germany is determined not to close schools again, so they’re sending individuals or classes into quarantine instead. Mask and other rules vary state-to-state. The government says keeping schools open extremely more important.

Most of the U.K.’s children got already back to school. British Prime Minister called reopening schools a “moral duty”, and his government even threatened to fine parents who keep their kids at home. Masks aren’t generally required.

Spain reopened schools in the beginning of September, in spite of an outbreak of new infections and of increasing anxiety from parents.

Concerning the Nordic countries, almost all schools reopened and there is a general consensus that there is more harm for kids staying home than the risk of sending them to school. Parents say it’s more dangerous to go to shopping malls, gyms or the movies with lots of others, than to join classrooms.

USA

In the United State the decision of reopening schools is largely the responsibility of states and local school districts, so school reopening may vary from one region to another… Most of the largest urban districts are starting the year remotely after a summer surge in virus cases. But other districts decided to get kids back to school at least part of the time.

AFRICA

While World Organization has urged that African countries should accelerate the reopening of schools, saying that children in Africa will suffer from not being able to go back to school, only very few countries succeeded in fully reopening school. It is a tough mission, as schools often lack running waters and proper toilets and classrooms are mainly extremely crowded. According to WHO, only a quarter of schools in Africa has basic hygiene services.

In South Africa, children have started to return to class from August, class by class. The South African government has also allowed parents who don’t want their children to return to school to apply for home schooling. Elsewhere in Africa, Kenya has closed its schools for the rest of 2020. In Uganda, the government is procuring radios for rural villages to help poor families with remote learning.

Source : www.un.org

Images credit AFP

Auteur : Adriana Munteanu – Business Development – amunteanu@juniorcity.fr