Covirus 19 coronavirus: kindergartens refuse to reopen on April 29

The country’s largest child care organization is still recommending its members to remain closed when schools and early childhood services officially reopen their doors on April 29.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that schools and early childhood centers will open for children starting next Wednesday, the second day after the country abandons Level 4 closure at 11:59 p.m. on Monday, April 27.

The Federation of Directors and teacher unions say schools and most early childhood services will stick to that schedule.

But the Early Childhood Council, whose 1,300 child care services have about 65,000 of the 200,000 children enrolled in early childhood education (ECE), says it still recommends that their centers remain closed due to the risk of the spread of the coronavirus. .

“We are deeply disappointed that the government has listened to our sector’s anxiety, but has chosen to ignore it,” said council chief executive Peter Reynolds, who asked yesterday that ECE remain closed at level 3.

Director-General for Health, Dr. Ashley Bloomfield, told reporters that children “have low infection rates, do not feel bad, and do not transmit the virus to other children and adults.”

But Reynolds said there was a lack of international evidence on whether or not the children transmitted the virus, and some children were known to have been infected, including three babies in New Zealand.

“Therefore, we maintain the view that services should not be opened at level 3,” he said.

He and the New Zealand Educational Institute have asked the Ministry of Health to publish the public health council Bloomfield provided to the Cabinet on the risks of reopening ECE schools and services.

Another ECE group, Child Forum, said that each ECE service would make its own decision on whether to reopen.

“Most ECEs are classified as commercial or community-owned and non-state. Therefore, the option to open or not is the same for most ECE services as for any other private business,” he said in a bulletin.

Its director, Dr. Sarah Alexander, said that the decision of each center will depend on whether they have teachers available to work who are not in a vulnerable group and who are willing to return to full contact with the children.

“In the first week, the collection could be very small for families. For example, a center that would normally say that up to 50 children might find that they only have two to eight children who return in the first week,” he said.

“If I had a young son, I probably wouldn’t run back, but would wait at least a week or more to see if there were new infections and if it was safe to return.”

But he estimated that 70 to 90 percent of teacher-led ECE services could be fully operational again by the second week of level 3, depending on whether staff are available.

Federation of Directors President Perry Rush said he expected most schools to be open by April 29.

He said most would contact parents this week to find out which children would return to school, and then they would have to arrange for the correct number of teachers to be in school, while other teachers would continue to teach students in line from home.

Ardern said he still wants “the vast majority of young people to learn from home.”

But he also said that moving to Level 3 will allow approximately 400,000 adults to return to their workplaces in sectors such as construction, manufacturing and forestry, and no one is sure how many will need schools and childcare because there will be no one to care for their children at home.

READ MORE:
• Covid 19 Coronavirus: Daycares want to remain closed at Alert Level 3
• Coronavirus Covid 19: the Ministry of Education publishes more information about back to school
• Covid 19 Coronavirus: School at Level 3 will not be voluntary after all
• Covid Coronavirus 19: what alert level 3 and other levels mean to you

Dr. Bloomfield will answer educators’ questions about the basic health and safety rules for reopening schools in a public Facebook Live session on the Ministry of Education’s Facebook page at 3:45 p.m. Tuesday.

• Level 3 Educational Rules: covid19.govt.nz.