Yes, home education has always been a choice, but seeing as many have been pushing for schools to not off-roll and screw over the most vulnerable students well before COVID (especially for those in exam years), I don't think encouraging parents with children who are more vulnerable to COVID to just leave is a good thing to be doing, it goes against years of work for the opposite. I think there needs to be more pressure for the funding and resources for schools to do this right.
Pretty sure some of the other countries used as examples have far stronger unions than here and have many things that teachers and parents have been asking for.
The ideas that years groups aren't mixing made me laugh. Yeah - that's the ideal, but when a school has 1 bike rack area, guess what happens? When you've a school that's already had to take on 30-60+ extra students per year group because they were meant to be a larger building last year but are still stuck in a temporary office one that was never meant to hold this many people - guess what happens even with the best will and rules in the world? Said school has talked about pretty much shrinking break times as much as possible when they go back because they can't manage social distancing in the building they're in with the staff they have and there is no funding for any other option but shrinking the school day. If they could get support for a rota system and funding for some additional measures, I think there would be a lot of benefits.
Making blanket statements isn't going to help - yes in many areas the NHS capacity has improved, but I'm in an area where we go from fine to not fine really fast largely because we've had so many hospitals closed in recent years that our last one standing is having to be used for a far larger area.
I was in a local meeting for public health recently specially about schools (though I'm still waiting on some of the datasets so I can't really contextualize some of it). It was really noticeable some settings had done far better than others - guess what, the poorer areas with poorer buildings with way too many students for the space were fucked last year. There may less risks due to the vaccine, but without any additional measures, they're still the most likely to be fucked.
I've no intent on keeping off my children who are school- and college- educated - even beyond my own desires for them to go back, they're all big enough that I couldn't even if I wanted to if they disagreed and, but when I've one child who is lucky enough to be in a place that has everything in place (but means he'll end up with far fewer GCSEs) and two others who aren't, it's does become a bit personal when the children and staff in my black hole area are getting shafted and blanket statements that schools have all the things aren't going to help any of those who with current resources can't to do that.
We have to be honest that we're taking more risks than countries we're hoping to be like because the government is putting less into supporting schools do this well rather than using the exceptional schools as a way to beat the schools doing less well and parents who are concerned. Yes, they can home educate, but that doesn't actually make anything better, it just adds onto the problems already there for home educated children and young people, both those who do it by choice and those who are stuck without suitable provisions.