* I thought that Scott Morrison last night was sounding reasonably good in his press conference of new restrictions, with little smirking to be seen; but it sort of fell apart yet again when it came to how he can't make "schools to remain open" sound logically consistent with things like "we are so worried about people being too close together in a food court, they can't sit down in one."
I don't care how many times Homer tells me in comments that his wife works at some (very unique, I reckon) school in which no teachers are scared of catching it from a student, and they all have no problem keeping 1.5m away from every single student every single minute of the day: my daughter tells me student numbers at her high school are down to less than half anyway, and the teachers that are turning up (some are not!) aren't really trying to teach those students who are there. I got a letter today from the school saying "yeah, we know this is really hard, but we aren't set up for online teaching, and the Year 12 assessment times are set in concrete and just have to start going ahead next week anyway. Good luck everybody!".
My brain does not understand why this is so difficult to deal with: an abrupt move to students learning at home is not going to be a success, so just close at least all high schools for a month now (adding two weeks to the Easter holiday) to let the schools work out how best to deal with "at home" schooling, and whether it is really needed after after a month at all. (It probably won't be, is my guess.) The date for assessments are pushed out, and students get two weeks less holiday later in the year.
If Victoria can manage this, why can't other states? There are presumably administrative reasons of which I am unaware, but this situation requires a new found flexibility, surely.
I do think that Morrison talking as if once you close a school down, for 2 weeks extra, you can never recover from it for the rest of the year (not to mention his suggestion that they might stay closed for 6 months), shows a remarkable lack of flexibility.
As for primary schools: an extended holiday now may help, except that those essential services parents who cannot look after the kids suddenly should be able to leave them at schools that perform more of a child minding service. Maybe it would be 1/5 of the normal students, with a similar reduction in staff needed to look after them.
* There is reason to think, based on a couple of things I have read today (like these comments by Peter Doherty) that the sudden strong action which we are having may succeed in never letting this problem get out of hand in the hospitals. I feel talk of closing down anything for 6 months may be unnecessarily alarmist.
* Conflict between doctors and experts as to future progress of the problem continues apace - it's interesting how difficult this problem is for experts as well as lay people.
2 comments:
No school and you can give up on any HSC exams or its equivalent this year.
I can tell you not many students at my wife's school
The only reason I can think of is that the government is concerned about all those children being at home while the parents are working, thereby causing a huge spike in child care facilities.
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