So heres an alternative education plan that could have been worked on.
n.b. this is not a fully worked out strategy and noting that we've spent €36billion so far on this crisis... but it does create a plan B for the challenge of schools not reopening 1/n

and for also supporting a large number kids who can't attend school in Sept.

First thing is there has been loads of lessons learned from March - June schooling at home. A whole host of that should be distilled and codified and stored and shared.

2/n

Provide every child in the country with a laptop and provide them with large amounts of content and material using an up to date version of sneaker net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet 

3/n

To quote Andrew S Tanenbaum "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."

Only now on USB drives.

Which gets around the sync broadband problem of online classes

4/n

Have smaller groups of students meet teachers in school on a weekly basis. Give every student some 1:1 time with a teacher every week.

5/n

Classes via Google classes / Teams / Zoom are OK too where possible but I don't think its possible or a good idea to try and reproduce the regular school environment online - the experience of it is exhausting for everyone.

6/n

And there are 100's of other things that can be done that could be hugely valuable too.

There seems to be a ideological drive to push every child in the country into school within two days in a way which makes no sense (in scientific, social or economic terms)

7/n

And there doesn't seem to have been any work on a plan B (or even a modified plan A) in the mean time.

8/8