Coronavirus pandemic: Schools in UK to open in September after months of lockdown

UK Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said on Friday that schools will reopen in the UK from September after almost two months of coronavirus lockdown.

“School is vital to each one of our children and that is why, we will bring all children, in all year groups, back to school in September,” he said.

Speaking during coronavirus briefing at 10 Downing Street, Gavin Williamson said that the government “signed up… to bring every child back, in every year group, in every school”.

As of now, year reception, year 1 and 6 in the primary and year 10 and 12 of the higher classes have returned to school.

The UK is following the Denmark “bubble model” in the school according to which teacher to student ratio is reduced, Williamson said.

While the guidance is still awaited on how the government prepares to open schools, Steven Chalke MBE, founder of Oasis Academy trust running 52 academy schools in the UK, questioned the September reopening of schools saying that they won’t be able to accommodate all students while following the social distancing measures.

“No architect ever sat down and said now this is the size of a school building we need for this number of students. Why don’t we build it three times bigger just in case a thing called coronavirus comes along and we will need it. So, there is no school building in the country that can accommodate all children coming back at the same time as maintaining social distancingin September world would not have changed,” he said.

“We need to think in two different ways. Firstly, we need to think about how we use other buildings that are still empty. There are church halls, there are mosques, there are village halls, community halls, there are libraries, there are museums, there are hotels; there are hotel conferenceswe are thinking through how we can use other buildings in the locality,” Chalke said.

Chalke has received a positive response from a church and a hotel in his locality already and it’s just the beginning. The challenge though is not only acquiring the buildings but also teaching methods.

Some schools are following a rotation system where children come one and then stay at home and finish assignments. “We take this a little bit further as education is about social and emotional development so provide them with a team-building curriculum,” said Chalke.

In all, each school might need a “bespoke approach” that follows the generic principle of using the empty buildings of the locality as school premises; rotate days when children attend school and re-forming the curriculum to fit the needs.

Now that the government has expressed its intent to bring all children back to school who have missed almost half of their school year questions and solutions would need to be weighed.

The education secretary also announced £1bn funding for students to catch up with learning and for school to appropriately the funding to boost the learning with tuitions where required.

Except for the children of key workers, schools were closed to all since March 20 in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.