Anyone else with DC due back at school in May?

[MayhapMayhem]

We're abroad and schools are planning to open mid-May, social distancing and hygiene measures will still need to be observed.

For us, keeping them off school is illegal, home schooling is only permitted if you are a qualified teacher.

Have you heard anything from your school about how they will manage this? What are you going to tell your (primary aged) DC and what should we be asking the school?

UK haven't had any indication of when schools will open yet, anything I've read tends to be speculation.

I would want to know what measures they are putting in place for hand washing, social distancing, teacher absence, monitoring temperature etc.

Which country are you in?

Our schools never fully closed but we have had a lot of measures in place to ensure the safety of the children. The main one has been making sure that children only encounter their own class. Each class has its own arrival and departure time, separate playtimes, designated toilet etc. We take the whole group to was hands a number of times a day. They only have contact with two adults (teacher and ta) and have to bring all food from home and eat in their classroom. The children are not allowed to touch each other and each has their own set of stationery to use so there should be no borrowing of a pencil or similar. It feels pretty safe and well managed here. From May this country are actually relaxing restrictions further as cases are dropping, we are a very small country so I think the outbreak has been more manageable here.

That's interesting to hear Why. How does it work when they are sitting at their desks? Are they next to each other or do they have 1m gap?

In the classroom there isn’t really much distancing, they have assigned desks (which we didn’t before) but they are not that far apart. I think they are trying to isolate each group of kids from each other but allow mixing within the group. I’m not sure a metre gap would really be achievable with the youngest children.