We’re still learning about how to live with #SarsCov2 & we're all concerned about long term effects of #school closures for #children

Given debates about #schoolreopenings I thought I’d share how things went for kids who restarted school in May, June & July in France

(thread)

The gradual re-opening strategy was broadly positive & reassured us for September

Important:
I do not suggest replicating this, but rather to observe how things went & learn from it

*Any strategies must be adapted to the local context & community-transmission*

In French state schools a gradual reopening from mid-May was determined by each local authority & each school in parts of the country with low levels of transmission. This is how it went for a 10-year-old in an overcrowded primary school which reopened in June

The teachers had been posting lessons on an online platform for home schooling. There were no visio or online classes, the children just sent back in their work when they could

A part-time voluntary reopening regime of the school was announced at the end of May & the teachers did a poll to find out if parents wanted their kids to participate from June. We said yes. Once you agreed, you had to stick to the schedule

The teachers came up with this initial plan:

-At first just 1 day per week of physical school per child & continued home schooling
-10 kids max per class
-staggered start & end times to avoid groups of people clustering outside of school

-Masks were not used by the children but were by the teachers
-Children could eat at the canteen with physical distancing & trays of food brought to their place
-Playground time was staggered per class
-Kids were asked to wash their hands & supervised to do so A LOT

As the experience went well, the teachers were able to shift the schedule to 2 days per week on a rotating schedule with continued home schooling

The school was deep cleaned mid-week & weekends plus regular cleaning in between

Finally, the government decided that all children would return to school for the last few weeks of term

This meant a few changes. In primary school, the numbers of children in class increased to almost normal numbers (n=30 ish)

...
-Staggered start & end times remained
-No masks for the kids
-Strict hand-washing regime
-In the canteen children were brought pre-made trays of food to their table

Downsides:

I found the governmental & local authority communication on state school reopening to be terrible. Nothing was explicit & we discovered how things would work bit by bit from one day to the next

As working parents this was really hard to manage, especially given we also had a kid in secondary where everything was different

I would recommend *much clearer communication*

From talking to teachers, the school staff found out about the government re-opening of schools at the public announcements, so had to prepare everything while parents wondered what was going on... Not good communication
Teachers/ schools could adapt things to their own situation

In some areas of France there were clustered outbreaks of #covid19 linked to school re-openings. When this happened the schools were shut down & home schooling resumed as during #lockdown. This did not happen where I live, where we have had low levels of community transmission

Upsides:

It was not too weird for the kids, the teachers *did an amazing job* in normalising things for them. I cannot praise them enough

My daughter was happy to see her classmates & her teacher. It all happened gradually, so everyone was able to see how it went & adjust

Some key points:

In French state schools children often eat at the school canteen. This is a potential #PublicHealth minefield for preventing transmission... Everyone touching the cutlery, physical proximity, queuing etc

But this was well managed too:
-The kids were prevented from moving around the canteen or queuing
-They ate with their class group & physically distanced at first
-They were brought trays & could not pick-out cutlery or bread

For secondary school things went differently, for example, teens were required to wear face masks all day & circulated in their class groups. Face masks were changed at lunchtime. They were made to use cleaning gel

Kids brought in their own masks where possible but the school did provide disposable ones

Where possible they stayed in one classroom all day & the teachers moved about the school

It also went well, but the mask wearing was hard in the hot summer classrooms of 30 people

As I said, these experiences may be useful to learn from & adapt. Experiences will have been different across the country

I want to take my hat off to the teachers, who were extraordinary & worked incredibly hard to manage gradual re-opening AND the online platform

The overall wellbeing of children & balance of risk was clearly at the centre of the reopening procedures set up by the school

While the French approach to most public policy is "universalist" & egalitarian this of course does not take into account existing inequalities

Some good people to follow about children's health & wellbeing :

@apsmunro
@sunilbhop
@Theresa_Chapple