Sending children back to school during Covid-19. What will you do?
During lockdown I’ve been writing letters to my children. Nothing too deep and meaningful, just general thoughts on the current situation and a few statistics and facts thrown in for good measure.
I thought it would be nice for our children to read back on when they’re a bit older and hopefully by then life will look a lot better than it does right now.
Living in Wales means that we’ve very much been living in England’s shadow when it comes to what our next step will be. With the recent announcement that all years will return to schools at the end of June, it’s made me question what to do for the best.
I genuinely didn’t expect the announcement to state that all years would go back. That’s probably because most press reports I’ve read only mention year six and the younger years. It did come as a bit of a surprise as I had just come to terms with the fact that our girls wouldn’t be returning until September.
It was kind of good as it meant that the decision had been taken out of my hands. Now however, well, things are a bid different.
Parents are so torn over what to do for the best. For example where my sister lives, the majority of parents are against sending their children back.
However, my girls school are more towards sending them back. At the moment, I’m 50/50 with it all. I really want to send them back because I think it would do them both so much good in terms of seeing their friends, being able to finish their school year and having a little bit of normality back.
On the other hand, one of our girls has a heart condition which makes me not want to send her back. I’ve come to the conclusion that we’ll wait to see what the girls school has to say and also what our daughters consultant says.
I’m reassured that our girls school has been open during lockdown as a hub school for key workers so they have already got safety measures in place and have experience of what currently works. This is something I find very reassuring, but I’m still feeling nervous about it.
What decision will you make? Will you send your children back to school? Let me know in the comments below.
4 Comments
Lee
June 9, 2020 at 8:04 am
We have been agonising with this decision too. Having a blended family with 4 kids (2 boys from me and 2 girls from my partner) means we already done some mixing of social bubbles with the kids coming and going to other parents.
My eldest stepdaughter has gone back as she is year 6. My youngest son is going back next week as his mum is a teacher and is going back to work. My eldest son is 16 so won’t be going back as it’s his GCSE year.
For my youngest stepdaughter, we have decided to let her go in for a couple of days a week. She is desperate to go in. Both me and partner work full time from home so it’s difficult to keep them entertained – she is so bored!
I have to say that I would be more cautious if one of them had a serious health condition. It’s not straight forward and every families situation is different….
Eddie
June 12, 2020 at 1:50 am
My daughters school carried out a safety inspection and risk assessment and they deemed it unsafe for the proposed early years to return. Our 2 girls in school are not in the years planned to return to school. But our 4yr olds nursery reopened on the 8th June, we have made the decision for her not to return. We didn’t think it was safe and with mum being classed as high risk, we didn’t want to take any extra risk.
Natasha Mairs
June 12, 2020 at 1:40 pm
My eldest is in year 10 and they can start going back to school from next week. But I have decided to keep all my kids at home until September
Crummy Mummy
July 16, 2020 at 8:23 pm
We’re in England and number #2 is back at school & number #3 is back at nursery but it will be September before #1 can return – she’s currently bored to tears! #ThatFridayLinky