We have opted to follow the government’s advice and sent our kids to school.

This is a little bit of a controversial topic and everyone has different opinions on it so I will go through the reasons why we have decided to send both of our kids to school.

In the middle of May, the government had announced that in England, the Reception, Year 1, and Year 6 are to be returning to schools as of 1st of June 2020. The guidance was then issued to the schools and the schools had been preparing to welcome children back, however, a lot of parents and teachers have raised their concerns as soon as the announcement was made.

The lack of information and confusion around the topic had split the nation in half which resulted in only 54% of “eligible” children returning to school on the 1st of June.

We have two children that are in school-age and both happen to be in Year 1 and Year 6 so we had some thinking to do.

Here is a video of this if you prefer to watch instead:

They are attending two different schools (when we moved we could not get the place in the same school). So we have received the correspondence from both schools informing of “Return To School” plans and how they envisaged the schooling would happen. The most important issue was the safety of children and staff hence there were many things to consider. The social distancing, cleanliness, and children’s hygiene in school were amongst those points considered.

They have also sent out the surveys to understand who was sending their children to school.

Before we could fill it in we had to consider all the pros and cons and we opted to sign them in.

After a lengthy discussion, we have made our decision and sent our kids to school.

Here are the 5 reasons why we have sent our kids to school on the 1st of June:

1. Safety

The utmost concern of every parent is their children’s safety.

And so it is ours! ♥

Always! ♥

With the information provided to us and the provisions in place, we believe it is safe for our children to return to school.

In the area that we live in were very few cases of COVID 19 and we do not know anyone that had fallen ill from Coronavirus or died of/with it.

Mind you both I and my husband are key workers and we decided to keep the children at home as we were unsure how bad is it going to get. I was working from home throughout the lockdown and hubby was working only a few random days as he’s workload has significantly reduced due to the Covid19… So we did not have to worry about the childcare at least.

Related posts:

The anxiety of Working Mum Juggling Responsibilities during the Lockdown.

How should a parent work from home during a lockdown period? 5 Top Tips

At the beginning of the lockdown, there were so many uncertainties and we didn’t want to take any risk. Neither of us was at high risk or in the vulnerable group however we still feared it and didn’t want to risk getting it. Who knows how strong we are to fight it off if we were to get it?

Related post: 2 weeks in – lockdown lessons we’ve learned.

So having considered none of us gone ill, none people we know got ill, the number of deaths getting down, and the whole situation improving we have decided there was little risk posed to us as a family if the children were to return to school.

 

2. We trust that the school is implementing all possible safety measures

Schools were given strict guidelines on how to ensure the safety of children and staff.

We were receiving continuous correspondence from each school keeping us updated on how the school is planning to get the children to return to a safe school environment.

We have seen that the schools are taking this very seriously and has our children’s best interest in heart. At the end of the day, most of the teachers are parents too and they want to ensure the same safety measures as they would expect for their children.

The schools although having slight differences have communicated to us how would the schooling look and this has reassured us that they are doing all they possibly can to keep social distancing and minimise the risk of possible infections.

Some of the safety measures include:

• Keeping the class sizes to a maximum of 14 children at a time,
• Spacing the children across the class to ensure 2m distance between them,
• Encouraging children to wash their hands regularly for 20 seconds,
• Lunchtime only allowed in the classes or outside (depending on the weather) but in a spaced-out manner,
• One way system of traffic inside the school and around the school premises with arrows and pictures guidance reminding everyone of these rules (example below),
• Staggered drop-off and pick-up time to avoid crowds

We believe these are sufficient rules and trust the school is truly taking this matter seriously.

 

3. We trust that the government knows what it is doing

I don’t say I always trust the government and I was not happy that the lockdown was being delayed to such a late stage whereas all other European countries have imposed it weeks before.

However, seeing how the government was acting on the financial crisis and how it was keeping us updated through daily briefings being very transparent with everything they are doing, truly has changed my perception on the matter.

The decision to close down nearly the entire economy and pay people to sit home must have been the most difficult for the government to make, and I believe they were truly worried that this might go very bad for everyone not having to introduce such drastic measures.

So it must have also been well-thought decision to slowly release the lockdown as they want to prevent the second wave were so many people would lose their lives and the economy would have to be shut down once again.

I think that us- the ordinary people- have not much say in this anyway but being a good citizen we should trust and oblige with the rules imposed on us by the governing bodies.

 

4. Kids need it

There are so many aspects and implications of the lockdown situation impacting children mental health.

Us adults struggle to cope with it, but at least we understand what is going on and why we need to be in such a situation. And I am not saying children don’t understand- although this depends on their age. They need the routine, the education, the peers to socialise with, the structure. And although most parents had tried their best to provide with some homeschooling and ensure some kind of routine, it is not quite the same as what they get in the “normal” school environment.

My kids, for example, had been sent some homework with video instructions. The eldest one managed to get through it with no problem, yet the middle one was not as keen to do home studies and sometimes it was very much a struggle to get him to sit down and read or do maths. It was also nowhere near as long as the school takes and not structured in the same way as we are not teachers and have no idea how to do it.

Also being with each other all the time they fought a lot (as siblings do). They just had enough of each other and played on each other’s nerves.

It’s nice that they had a company but it’s not the same as peers/school friends.

Now that they have returned they are very happy and look forward to going to school every single morning.

As of now, however, only my son goes to school Monday to Friday. My daughter’s school has introduced two groups system across two working days. Hence she only goes to school on Thursday and Friday. The other group goes on Monday and Tuesday and on Wednesday the school goes through a thorough cleaning process.

5. We need it

Am I guilty of wanting my children to go back to school? I feel almost embarrassed to admit that I want them to be back to school just so that I can get some peace and quiet in the house… I want them to socialise with their peers, to learn, and to go back to “normality” but most importantly, I need a bit of peace at home when I work from home (which I still do most of the days if my husband has to go out to work).

The last 10 weeks of a lockdown has really tested my patience and I have turned into this parent that shouts a lot as I was just having enough of it!

Related post:

30 Common Parenting Mistakes and how to avoid them

I think most of the parents that had to work from home and manage the kids at the same time had the same struggles? How did you cope? Am I the only one that has had enough- let me know in the comments below?

 

Conclusion

Following the government announcement, we have sent our kids to school and this was one of the hardest decision we had to make in the past few years.

Our children wellbeing is our priority but we have every faith in the school and the government that the provisions have been put in place to ensure this will be done in the safest possible way.

We also know that children want to go back to school and interact with their peers as much as we want them to. We have had very long 10 weeks of being pretty much in each other faces 24/7 so this is definitely a good time to start returning back to some sort of normality.

We all have to return back to normality sooner or later.

If you are still making this decision and not sure what to do remember one thing:

Whatever it is you are going to decide, follow your heart and don’t look at what everyone else does. It is your family and you must be comfortable with what you are going to do.

I hope you have found this useful and informative and helped you decide as well if you would be sending your children to school.

Either way please let me know in the comments below…

I hope you have enjoyed this post and understand why we have sent our kids to school.

Please don’t forget to share.

 

Thank you