On Wednesday, New York City decided to close its public schools beginning Thursday after the city achieved a positivity rate (seven-day average) of 3%. This is one of the lowest bars in the US, but given New York’s debilitating first brush with the pandemic in March and April, perhaps it is justified. New York acted swiftly to reopen some of its public schools in September, but with the second wave of the pandemic beginning to take over the city (and state), it has been clear for days that a closure was imminent.
The closure announcement came around the same time that UNICEF released a report on the impact of Covid-19 on children, which said that only 24% of schoolchildren around the world have access to internet channels. India is relatively better off. A recent study by Azim Premji University found that 40% of children in 1,522 schools surveyed in 26 districts in five states had access to online learning methods.
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India’s approach to education during the pandemic has been very different from that of most other countries. In Europe and the United States (and even Australia), the emphasis has been on keeping schools open as long as possible. During the progressive closures imposed in some regions of these countries and in Europe, schools are often the last to close and the first to reopen. India kept schools closed for months and allowed their partial and conditional reopening only in mid-October, although many states and Union territories did not do so until November. Some have not yet.
India’s decision was not entirely unexpected; it is also not unjustified. It is difficult to ensure social distancing, masking and other protocols, both in public and private schools of different shades. There’s also the issue of transportation: Many children use public or shared transportation to and from school, and a large-scale reopening of schools could overwhelm a transportation system that itself is returning to normal only now.
However, the science is reasonably clear that the risks of going back to school are extremely low for younger children.
As the UNICEF report notes, “data from 191 countries collected between February and September does not show a consistent association between the status of school reopening and rates of Covid-19 infection.” The report also refers to a study in 31 countries conducted by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control that found that “child-to-child transmission in schools was rare and was not the main cause of Covid-19. in children who were infected during the time they attended school ”.
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It is older schoolchildren who are most at risk (and, of course, teachers and staff). However, many states in India have allowed schools to reopen for older children, especially concerned with those in Class X and Class XII (the two years that children sit for examinations conducted by their respective boards) who may not have access to online resources or are not successful in online education.
This columnist believes that the states and territories of the Union should have reopened schools for younger children – despite logistical and other challenges, it is safer for them to be in school than older children – and also make sure , as the Office 108 of July 18 suggested, that each child has access to a device and an Internet connection. This would have helped address contingencies, like the one New York is facing now, and would have also addressed the problem of older children. In fact, children in classes IX through XII who can currently attend school in most states should be the ones staying home simply because they face higher risks of infection (than younger children).
Finally, as the UNICEF report explains, young children depend on schools for more than just education: “… nutrition, psychosocial support and health services …”
It would be unfair to deprive them of those.
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