The world goes back to school

France

Will masks be the life­line for a nor­mal re­turn to school? This is what the French gov­ern­ment thinks. Some 12.8 mil­lion chil­dren and ado­les­cents re­turn to schools in France with many of the so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures ap­plied in May re­laxed on the one hand but with com­pul­sory use of masks on the other. The use of masks will be manda­tory for all teach­ers and stu­dents over the age of 11. It is a lower re­quire­ment than the WHO’s pro­posal to use masks from the age of six, but it ex­pands their use com­pared to the re­turn to the class­rooms dur­ing lock­down. At the time, sec­ondary school stu­dents and teach­ers were only re­quired to pro­tect their faces in schools where safety dis­tances of one metre could not be re­spected. Mi­nors ac­count for less than 5% of the num­ber of Covid cases and do not usu­ally show se­vere symp­toms. In France, how­ever, there has been a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in in­fec­tions in re­cent weeks, mostly be­tween the ages of 15 and 44, a range that in­cludes sec­ondary school stu­dents.

Ger­many

Ger­many has re­turned to school in sep­a­rate waves, in ac­cor­dance with to its fed­eral sys­tem. With or with­out a pan­demic, school years and hol­i­days do not begin or end on the same day, not even the same month. Each Land has its own weeks be­tween the end of June and be­gin­ning of Sep­tem­ber, a prac­tice aimed at pre­vent­ing the pop­u­la­tion from all going on hol­i­day at once in the EU’s most heav­ily pop­u­lated coun­try.

As for spe­cial mea­sures against Covid-19, the rule of leav­ing every­thing under the ju­ris­dic­tion of each re­gional power has re­mained in place. The school year began in Berlin on July 10, with masks com­pul­sory in schools’ com­mu­nal areas. North Rhine-West­phalia, the most pop­u­lous state with 18 mil­lion peo­ple, and the most af­fected by the pan­demic, did so a week later, with masks also com­pul­sory in class­rooms.

The first chil­dren to re­turn to school were from Meck­len­burg-Vor­pom­mern, a rural Land with the coun­try’s low­est in­ci­dence of in­fec­tion. Yet, two schools had to close a day after the re-start. Bavaria, with the sec­ond high­est con­ta­gion rate, will be the last to re­turn to class and will have been able to fine-tune its so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures with masks, hand wash­ing, and so on.

Ger­many has ex­pe­ri­enced a con­tin­ued rise in in­fec­tions since mid-July, mostly im­ported by those re­turn­ing from hol­i­day. The trend is likely to con­tinue at least until the hol­i­day sea­son is over.

UK

Scot­tish schools were the first to open in the UK on Au­gust 11, and are there­fore the bench­mark for the coun­try. The re­turn to class was done in a stag­gered man­ner over one week. Ac­cord­ing to Scot­tish gov­ern­ment guide­lines, pri­mary and sec­ondary school stu­dents are not re­quired to keep a safe dis­tance and masks are vol­un­tary for both pupils and teach­ers.

Schools have re­mod­elled the lay­out of the spaces with en­trance and exit doors only. There is a limit on the num­ber of stu­dents walk­ing around the build­ing at one time. In­side, each class­room has its own dis­in­fec­tion point and has been equipped with gel and clean­ing prod­ucts for stu­dents to clean desks and chairs each time they use them.

All desks face the board. Chil­dren sit in pairs and re­main com­pan­ions through­out the year so as to mix as lit­tle as pos­si­ble. This is how they have cre­ated what they have de­fined as “bub­ble classes” to limit con­tact.

British PM Boris John­son has de­clared school re­open­ing a pri­or­ity and at­ten­dance manda­tory, de­spite some par­ents’ re­luc­tance. Schools in Eng­land open this week. The use of masks is rec­om­mended in sec­ondary school and will be manda­tory in dis­tricts with high in­fec­tion lev­els.

Bel­gium

The Bel­gian gov­ern­ment an­nounced that all stu­dents would start school on Sep­tem­ber 1 with masks oblig­a­tory for those over 12, and that there would be no ex­cur­sions “until fur­ther no­tice”. The Bel­gian plan cur­rently fo­cuses on sec­ondary school stu­dents, al­though an ad­di­tional doc­u­ment is ex­pected with guid­ance for the younger ones.

The mea­sures in this coun­try are based on the ob­ser­va­tion of the par­tial re­turn to classes in May and June, in which no rise in the spread of the virus was de­tected. The gov­ern­ment ex­pects stu­dents to go to school five days a week, after rul­ing out dis­tance learn­ing on Wednes­days as orig­i­nally planned.

Scan­di­navia

While Den­mark and Nor­way are com­mit­ted to nor­mal ed­u­ca­tion, Fin­land has re­tained re­stric­tions and warns of new mea­sures, and in Swe­den, which did not close schools dur­ing the pan­demic, it is un­known whether chil­dren will re­turn to face-to-face teach­ing in sec­ondary schools after the hol­i­days. Masks are not re­quired at schools in these coun­tries, al­though they are being used on pub­lic trans­port this month.