The Scottish Government has yet again ignored pleas from parents to prioritise the re-opening of schools and assumed that, somehow, working parents can educate their offspring whilst just about everyone is confined to their homes.
Yet in England, we see how nurseries have stayed open in England and cases are still falling. Edinburgh University professor, Devi Sridar, recent stressed the harms of school closure, which “entrench educational inequalities. This has an irreversible effect on people’s life chances. No amount of financial support can completely mitigate or reverse these harms, because schooling goes far beyond literacy and numeracy; it’s also about social and physical development and providing safe places where children can access supportive adults. Moreover, we know the impact of school closures falls largely on women; during the first lockdown, 41% of working women struggled to find childcare to cover their hours.”
Note the evidence showing the lack of risk to re-opening nurseries and P1-5: one analysis of more than 9 million adults in England who shared a household with children aged 11 or under did not indicate an increased risk of Covid-19. We also saw in August that re-opening schools did not lead to any noticeable increase in Covid cases at that point (in fact, the problems seemed to really start when the University students moved around the country for the start of their studies).
Consider that in Renfrewshire, 21st to 27th November, there were 215.0 cases per 100,000 in their weekly count. This compares with Moray’s highest ever per capita figure of 154.5 in mid-January. That’s obviously still too high but much greater figures in other parts of the country before Christmas and even back in last November did not necessitate indefinite school closures.
Why is Moray again being penalised for being part of Scotland? Why are we not seeing a regional, evidence-led approach for keeping nurseries and Primary schools open wherever possible!?
I’m fed-up with our kids being forced to suffer massive disadvantages because we have been prioritising the elderly and clinically vulnerable. We need to address this imbalance and ensure some inter-generational fairness. It is appalling to think back to the amount of teaching day’s lost in May and June in Moray (by the point school “finished for the summer holidays, there had been LESS THAN 100 cases across Moray). Looking back, it fills me with anger that our MSPs ignored my repeated pleas back then to re-open schools.
After initially claiming the schools closures would only last till the end of January, they are now pushing back the date for any sort of proper return to school and nursery, even for our youngest children who pose very little and are suffering the worst effects of lockdown.
As their future is being blighted by the crippling debt burden we are mounting-up to pay perfectly healthy people to “stay at home”, they also losing out on so much high quality education, in addition to all the usual joys of childhood denied to them. How can the Scottish Government be so blase about what they are sacrificing?
There has not even been an acknowledgement from the Scottish Government that children under 10 could return back to school and nursery earlier, especially as they pose very little threat and are suffering the worst effects of lockdown.
As their future is being blighted by the crippling debt burden we are mounting-up to pay perfectly healthy people to “stay at home”, they also losing out on so much high quality education, in addition to all the usual joys of childhood denied to them. How can the Scottish Government be so blase about what they are sacrificing?
Consider this story after the first lockdown – “My baby screamed when she saw new faces”. Those were the faces of her grandparents who she’d not seen after months of separation. Why are substantial harms of lockdown not being properly weighted in your decision-making calculas? Do we even know the long-term impact on children’s developing brains of this policy of mass “house arrest”? We have never kept so many people indoors for so long in the last 10 months. Will we end-up like battery chickens, genetically weakened and unable to resist whatever viruses emerge in the future?
Look – children are vulnerable too. They have done nothing to deserve this awful situation they find themselves and should not be locked-up and denied so much because of the threat to those who have already managed to enjoy fifty years or more on this planet. Our little ones will in just a few short years have to clean-up the mess of global warming, soil erosion and plastic pollution that we are bequething to them. You’re making their lives worse even as you add to the problems they will inherit.
All the while, who is being prioritised? Well, Saga cruises are saying anyone who boards their ships, which they plan to launch again in May, must be vaccinated. So, yet again, older people will be the ones who first enjoy holidays again! Where is the inter-generational fairness?
J.R.R. Tolkein in “Lord of the Rings” pinpoints how an over-weening pride and fear of death corrupts humanity, as in the tragedy of Numenor’s downfall. The people, who are already blessed to with lifespans measured in the hundreds, cannot cope with the fact they are growing old and are about to die, so they take-up arms against the gods in the vain pursuit of immortality and, as a consequence, are almost completely destroyed (apart from Elendil and the “Faithful”, from which stock springs Aragorn). I wonder what it will take for Scotland and so many in our world to realise there are things much worse than those who have lived a long life dying?
excalibrate 