With the UK’s hopeful roadmap out of lockdown outlined by the Prime Minister, one of the first - and most crucial - steps is to reopen schools. I interviewed Mariam K., a year 12 student in London, about her views on the return to schools next week.
Firstly, she described the mixed feelings that she and her peers have about the return: the desire to be back in a fairly normal school setting is shrouded by the precarity of the current situation. They are relieved to have less time in front of a screen, more structure to their week and human interaction with friends, teachers and the wider school community yet there exists much anxiety about becoming complacent with social distancing and confusion with catch-up work.
Mariam went on to discuss the possibility of the return causing a spike in cases: “There’s no guarantee that it won’t result in another wave. Is it really safe or will this be a replica of last term?” With the successful rollout of the vaccine in the UK, there seems to be more hope of there not being another mass rise in cases and hospitalisations, yet the return to school marks the first big mixing of groups since this lockdown so students still fear transmissions and subsequently passing these onto their families.
We then discussed the testing procedure in schools and Mariam highlighted the importance of this in reducing the spread between students yet “realistically it may not be as successful as we think. Do schools have enough support to do it, resources, space, compliance amongst families, will students continue to social distance if they receive a negative test?”. Testing will clearly be one of the pillars to reducing future school closures by isolating asymptomatic cases, yet there continue to be many unknown factors about its execution.
Mariam spoke of how schools can tackle educational inequality, foremostly understanding that not every child has the same domestic situation and access to resources like laptops. In the coming months, schools could offer extra lessons and supplementary work to ensure students are up to scratch. If space and guidelines allow, they could even provide quiet workrooms, as “ultimately for many students school is a safe environment where they are able to concentrate, which may not be the case at home”.
Of the announcement that GCSE and A-Level students will be awarded grades by their teachers, Mariam described how teachers know their students best and results will therefore reflect the students’ true abilities yet there may be some leniency where teachers look at potential rather than capability. No student or teacher wants a repeat of last year’s fiasco where algorithmically generated grades highlighted educational inequality amongst race, state and independent schools and location and failed to reward the students’ hard work.
We must learn from all of the attempts to stabilise education throughout the past year to ensure that we do not make the same mistakes going forward and that students are able to prosper in their futures. That, of course, is our ultimate goal.
