We've had 9 bus drivers die from Covid 19 in London over the past few weeks. Apparently, according to Khan, the buses have now had the 'listening holes' you find in the perspex shield next to the driver, covered.
The supermarkets are installing perspex guards around both sides of the till operators. We're expected to queue outside shops and post offices 2 metres apart, then keep that distance when we're inside.
How does that get translated to a school? A perspex shield for the teacher? Half the class numbers so you can spread the kids out? How do half a dozen science teachers, for example, cover science in those circumstances when they normally teach a group of 30 and now have to cover two classes of 15? Do people think there are double the number of teachers to those used every day? Kept in the broom cupboard in case of emergency?
With shielding, those teachers who are sick, those with underlying health issues not being available we're likely to see doubling up of classes, not halving. Which goes completely against social distancing rules and all those implications.
And how do teachers handle break time? Cancel it? What about meal time? I work in a school of 2000 pupils. How do you move them around in an hour whilst social distancing? No 'jumping on your mates' as the boys are prone to do, no 'walking arm in arm', no running about afterwards or playing football. Seems straightforward? Kids aren't robots though - unless you reduce the size of the groups, you can't control their behaviour to that extent and there isn't the space in a school for social distancing with its normal numbers present.
As for hand washing - good luck. Unless you line up 2000 kids at specific times of the day you will always get those who don't do it. There are plenty of adults who don't do it so why we expect kids to be paragons of the soap dispenser I don't know! Kids share pens (usually chewed), food, equipment in class as they often have to share. No teacher will have time to wipe down a test tube before Ed passes it to Caitlyn in class - it's just not feasible. Plus Ed and Caitlyn will have to stand together to do the work!
Or do we open up to, say, year 1, 3 and 5 on Monday to Wednesday lunch time and year 2, 4 and 6 from Wednesday afternoon to Friday (similar for the secondary).
So, if you're being told to get back to work in your factory, driving your train or whatever, you'll only have your kids back at school for half the week. That works for social distancing but not for the economy.
And, of course, if you have children in year 1 and 4 in that scenario, you're buggered. You'll have a child on their own for part of the week - at the age of 5 or 6. Or you don't work. Like now. Or you try to find child care - just like all the rest of the parents who now only have a child in school for half a week.
Whichever way you slice it, this utopia of getting the schools open then every one can get back to work isn't possible whilst social distancing is needed.
We either do part time days or part time weeks or x years in on certain days and y years in on others and parents will just have to manage that. That's the stark reality. That or we have a hot bed of Covid 19. Because children are getting it now. Quite why I don't know, but they are now becoming victims where they weren't before.
Schools can't just flip back to the way they were before all of this.
And, of course, I can imagine the conversation in the bus companies when they call on bus drivers to take a double decker full of kids from their secondary school to home. If they don't then, again, it'll be down to the parents to get their kids there and back.
There is a lot of thought needed before the schools go back in the way many parents assume they will.