Social Distancing in Schools not possible

Schools reopening is the next item on government's agenda across the Globe now that the curve has been flattened in several countries. Globally this has been a matter of concern as to what might be the best approach to open schools. Several proposals have come up. We will look at some of them. 

Israel has shut down schools after reopening after cases spiked in classrooms. Several countries that want to open schools are observing the early openers but every country understands that the issues facing in each country are deparment and also that the strains being observed in countries are not the same. There are different strains of Covid making it impossible for a Uniform Vaccine for Covid. Parents in several countries are hesitant to send children to schools. In UK, both parents and schools are refusing to open schools in several places despite governmenta asking to open them. 

The vaccines have still a long way to go to be tested for side effects. Many pandemic vaccines have had side effects in the past since due to time constraints, they werent effectively tested. 

Social distancing norm of 2 metres means that in a classroom size of 8m*6m, only 9 students can sit in a class. So for typical class size of 40 students, it would require 4 teachers and 4 classrooms to teach in the class. Normal distancing has been around 1m. So schools cannot operate with 2m distance is very clear as we can see in the above diagram as well. This is the size in Standard Govt.designated norms. 

In several private schools, the classroom sizes are very less and moreover, they squeeze in even 3-4 students in a bench. They have 15 benches in a classroom and accomodate around 45 students. There are schools which even have 60 students in a classroom. None of these schools can meet the Social Distancing norms of 2 meters. Standard schools which have chairs for students can easily manage by having only 9 chairs in a room. 

Govt has proposed shift system with 50 percent capacity few days as week. Even in international schools or standard CBSE schools, where norm is not to cross 25-30 students, it would mean only 12 students at a time.This will require double shifts by teachers to teach the same class or twice same class with 2 diff.set of students.

There is another option of only 100 days schools and the rest through e-learning. Parents are asking government officials to make this entire academic year online learning only instead of physical classses. It remains to be seen what will be government policy finally.

In India, J&K parents, Mumbai, NCR, Bengaluru parents are all refusing to send children to school. They are fine with e-learning for this academic year. Some corporate schools are forcing children to pay full year or half year fees upfront since they are aware that parents are asking for several changes and they might not be able to charge full year fees this academic year due to huge portion of online learning.   

There are schools which themselves do not want to open this academic year not just because of Covid, but moreso because running schools with COVID norms will involve double costs with shift system for them. Hence they are also open to full year e-learning in India.