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France
The French will send their 12.9 million students back to school on Tuesday, despite the sharp rise in infections in recent weeks.
The government of President Emmanuel Macron wants to reduce inequalities for children affected by the quarantine and allow more parents to return to work.
All teachers, middle and high school students will be required to wear masks all day, and schools will have one-way hallways and limited meetings. The soup kitchens will reopen to help children who depend on state-subsidized hot meals.
The Paris region offers free laptops for children who are sent to quarantine.
Germany
Most German students are already in schools, and at least 41 out of 825 Berlin schools have reported cases of Sars-CoV-2 infection.
Thousands of students have been quarantined across the country, following outbreaks that some doctors attribute to family reunions and travel during summer vacation.
But Germany is determined not to close schools again, so it is sending a child or a class to quarantine. The mask and other rules vary by land.
In Berlin, children can remove their masks during class, while other regions require them to wear them all the time.
The German government says keeping schools open is more important than bringing fans back to stadiums or allowing crowds to attend concerts.
UK
Most of the 11 million British students have not seen a class since March, but the children will start school in England on September 4.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the reopening of schools a “moral duty” and his government has even threatened to fine parents who keep their children at home.
The measures implemented include facilities for hand washing and changing start times and lunch breaks, but masks are generally not required.
Some high schools are considering a hybrid mix of face-to-face and online classes, but the goal is to go back to school physically.
The UK has more than 41,500 deaths from the virus, the highest confirmed in Europe. Johnson’s administration has come under fire for handling the pandemic.
Spain
Amid new infections, growing fears from parents and criticism from teachers’ unions, Spanish officials are adapting their plans ahead of the school opening on September 4. The executive hires an additional 11,000 teachers, builds makeshift classrooms in the schoolyard to gain space and create “bubbles” for students who can interact with each other, but not with outsiders.
Authorities face additional pressure from demand to revive the economy, given that the state has a relatively high rate of child poverty. Save the Children calls for electronic devices to be distributed to disadvantaged families. The teachers’ unions want to go on strike.
Madrid plans to run classes with physical assistance for all students under the age of 12 and a combination of online and face-to-face teaching for adults.
The Nordic states
Most schools resumed classes last week in the Nordic states, as they did at the end of the spring semester, with a general consensus that it is more harmful for children to stay home than the risk of sending them to school.
Sweden has developed few epidemiological measures, apart from prohibiting parents from entering schools when bringing their children.
High school students in Denmark even protested after the country’s second-largest city closed its schools due to new infections. They said they didn’t learn as much at a distance and questioned why they could go to shopping malls, gyms or the movies with so many others, but not school.
U.S
In the United States, where the 12th grade kindergarten education system is largely the responsibility of state and local school districts, President Donald Trump and the Secretary of Education have asked schools to reopen for classes with the physical presence of students. But there has been a heated public debate over the decision to send students back to class, especially in communities with many new cases per day. So reopening plans vary across the country.
Most of the larger urban districts start the year remotely, following a sharp increase in infection cases. But other districts plan to offer face-to-face hours at least part of the time. Some have been forced to quarantine classrooms or close entire schools due to the spread of COVID-19 infections.
Africa
Only six African states have fully reopened their schools.
In South Africa, students from each class began returning one by one this week. It is the second time that schools have reopened, after the first attempt caused new infections and the closure of some units. As new cases of COVID-19 wane, the government said all classes should return to schools on Monday. The South African government has allowed parents who do not want to take their children to school to apply for homeschooling.
Kenya has closed its schools for the rest of the year.
In Uganda, the government buys radios for distance education in villages where there are vulnerable families.
Japan
Some schools in Japan reopen on Monday, after a shorter-than-usual summer vacation, to make up for hours lost due to the pandemic. At a primary school in Tokyo, children in masks held an opening ceremony in classrooms instead of gyms to maintain better social distance.
China
In the past month, 208 million Chinese students, or about 75% of all students nationwide, have returned to class, many of them on a staggered schedule. The rest are expected to return on September 1.
Philippines
The Philippines has repeatedly postponed the reopening of schools, which is now scheduled to begin on October 5. Even then, only distance education classes will be allowed. President Rodrigo Duterte said that classes with physical presence should resume only when a COVID-19 vaccine is available.
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