Do the schools open completely or is it just changing classes? School Senator Sandra Scheeres has (exceptionally) good arguments on her side. The incidence is higher in the age groups of school children than in the general population.
Many parents are not vaccinated, and many educators do not yet have full vaccination protection. After the summer holidays, the risk in full presence operations will be much lower than it is now, because by then millions more vaccine syringes will have been administered to adults and older children. All of this speaks in favor of not taking the risk too quickly just before the summer vacation.
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On the other hand, some classmates haven’t seen each other for half a year. The burden that lay on the shoulders of the children and their parents this school year is gigantic.
On Friday the news came that indoor restaurants and hotels in Berlin might open again on June 4th. It is outrageous that society is investing the risk budget it has to distribute in a different way everywhere before putting it into running the school.
One question, however, needs to be more in focus: How can the children experience a conciliatory end to the school year? It shouldn’t be about getting as much learning material into the little heads as possible. It’s about sending the children off into the holidays with a feeling of confidence. With the notion that things can turn out well. Maybe even looking forward to the next school year, in which hopefully the state of emergency corona will come to an end step by step.
An intensified test offensive is needed for schools
Starting next week, excursions and outdoor celebrations should be allowed in full class size again. That goes exactly in the right direction: a walk in the forest instead of alternating operations.
Scheeres’ administration has also announced that all primary school children will be able to use the after-school care center again from next week. However, there is no clear line. Change classes in the mornings, and in the afternoons everyone see each other in the after-school care center: The epidemiologist of personal trust would probably find that less useful.
Why not take a hands-on approach to the problem? A test offensive could begin in the coming week, in which tests are no longer just twice a week, but daily for the rest of the school year. It would bring additional security.
Almost four weeks of school remain. If the incidence continues to fall so happily, all the children could actually come together again in the very last days of the school year. And specifically not with the expectation of wanting to make up for the failures of a school policy that has been chaotic since the beginning of the pandemic.
Instead, the focus is on the question of how the children are doing and what the school can do to enable them to meet and to emotionally accommodate them where necessary. The children have to feel that they are seen in the class community and that they are in good hands. Especially since many classes will not continue with the existing line-up in the coming school year and children want to say goodbye to each other.
Parents must still have a choice
Of course, these ideas only apply under one important premise: that parents continue to have the choice of whether they want to expose their child to the risk of infection at school at all. The compulsory attendance is still suspended. That is a good thing and it must stay that way until vaccinations are available for all school children.
The schools would be the first to open again, it was said from politics when everything shut down. It didn’t happen that way. The right to education is extremely important, it said. Now there are no vaccine quotas specifically for adolescents. The discussion about the mode of running a school is also so grueling because society as a whole is still setting its priorities incorrectly.
