By Editorial Director, The Art of Living Blog USA Art of Living Faculty * E-RYT500, YACEP, C-IAYT
The Covid situation in the UK is soaring out of control as they are reaching up 1325 death daily and hospitals are overcrowded and the staff is overwhelmed. Under this the educators committee met on Saturday to discuss the safety of the children that will be going to school.
Boris Johnson was forced to retract his statement that schools would be the safest place for children as they become the main reason as to why the children were getting infected by the disease. This is because the schools are packed with children there is almost 60% attendance which is a cause for alarm. The schools have not been told to limit their numbers and any child that does not have access to a laptop has been told to come to school so they will not be left behind.
The National Education Union (NEU) along with other unions has asked the government to please explain why they are letting this happen causing there to be a breeding ground for the infection to be carried to all part of the country by the students attending schools and becoming carriers of the virus.
Tania Kent who is a special need teacher says that action must be taken and educational workers must also be seen as essential workers as they too are at risk of getting the virus by coming into school every day. She claims that “An immediate walk out must be organized, the closure of all non-essential industries. All education workers must be paid a full salary and millions provided to ensure proper online learning—paid for by seizing the mega-profits of the major corporations and banks. The fight for this programme demands the political mobilization of the entire working class in the struggle for socialism.”
It is not only the citizens of the UK but also foreign Students that are at risk of getting The Pandemic. Most UK universities have foreign students from all over the world and since returning they too are at risk and now that borders are closed they have no way of leaving the UK either. The decision taken to open schools is by proving to be a bad one as many students and teachers are contracting the disease and most of them succumb to it.
A teachers assistant (TA) Harvey Thompson stated that the government has covered up data to show the public that opening schools would be the safest thing to do for the children as well as educational workers not showing them the data that 148 education workers have dies since June and 9 deaths since September. It isn’t easy to get child and student deaths but these above numbers of staff deaths should be warning enough that schools should not be considered the safest for anyone to be.
The DFE (Department for Education) is claiming that they do not have any sure and valid information about the deaths of these educators and that they are keeping them as absentees, so the question must be asked why keep that a secret? Why not inform the relevant authorities that they have not contacted their places of work and investigation need to be done as to whether they are ok or not. It begins to feel like ther are covering up for the fact that they have not checked on these workers and of their wellbeing.
The question is if there is a risk to all educational staff that teach on schools that they may get the virus and they may die from it why are you honest and open about those numbers, does the public that entrust their children to you for safe keeping for a few hours a day deserve to know that there is a risk of the virus spreading so that other measures can be taken.
Labour party Mayor Sadiq Khan stated that they are at the peak of the pandemic now with 31,624 Patients in the hospital and the ambulance service getting more than 8000 calls daily its beginning to take a toll on the essential workers, fire fighters and police officers have been called in to active line of duty to drive ambulances, the toll is also on nurses who have to handle more than 1 critical patient a day on top more than 650 healthcare workers dying because of the disease.
As schools opened so did the universities and colleges and students that then returned were told to go back home making it the 3rd semester in a row that they had to do online schooling with no access to resources such as libraries and their teachers in case they needed extra guidance on their studies. The students blame the government claiming that they mismanaged this situation of the virus and now it is out of control. Though the schools are closed the students are still expected to pay the fees to their universities which have not been reduced, the amount comes to almost 9,000 pounds an year and international students pay 36,000 pounds and this is only for online learning.
The question that is asked is why are there more children in school now that the situation is worse than there was during the first lock down where the situation was more under control, and the answer itself is simple the government by keeping work places open is forcing parents to go to work so they can receive a salary which forces the parent to send the child to school so that they have a structured day. Kent explains that during the first lock down only if both parents were key/ essential workers was the child allowed to come to school now the government has said if it is one parent the child can go to school.
The media is taking measures to make it look like the educational staff is blaming the parents for sending the children to school but this isn’t the case they are blaming the government for not taking proper precautions and for not helping the parents to cope with what is happening.
