The Great Schools Argument: Data indicates that schools should not be closed

It now appears that this is a debate between fear and science, and both sides make valid points. It is between the legitimate and human feeling of watching your child walk into a school with a face mask, to fearful teachers, and listening to an expert. In the meantime, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga may be playing for time, hoping that as the data on infections at schools emerges, it will move public opinion in favour of keeping them open.

There can be no doubt about the difficulty of the governance decision that keeping schools open poses. Here, and in many other countries, it appears to pose the most difficult governance decision of them all.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-07-16-schools-the-hardest-governance-decision-of-them-all/

Over the last few days, this discussion appears to have changed in important ways.

First, there is more evidence from the experts about keeping schools open. The economist Dr Nicholas Spaull has written convincingly about why schools should stay open. Importantly, he changes the question: instead of asking about the “cost” of reopening schools, he suggests we should ask whether the benefits outweigh the costs.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-07-22-six-reasons-why-schools-must-be-open-if-we-are-to-fight-covid-19/

Another way of putting it may be to ask: Do children receive more benefit inside school, or outside school, during this time?

This could change the game. Many experts, including Professor Jonathan Jansen, have said that the academic year is not worth saving. But that may not be the correct question. The correct question may be closer to Spaull’s benefit vs cost formulation.

Then there is the issue of school meals. Last week the High Court in Pretoria ruled that the Basic Education Department must reinstate the provision of meals in all provinces. This means that the other provinces will have to join the Western Cape in providing meals (the DA administration there kept the meals system running).

If children are gathering to receive meals (and the importance of meals cannot be overstated), why not let them gather to receive education, too?

In the meantime, Equal Education has said that it believes communities should fight to keep schools open for as long as they can. In other words, if schools have to close from time to time, that’s fine, but keep them open so long as children are receiving some form of meal and education.

Equal Education secretary-general Noncedo Madubedube also says that people should not believe that there is teaching and learning taking place in “black, working-class households”. She says their surveys have found that 80% of children want to go back to school, as they see school as a “place of safety”.

Meanwhile, there is more data coming from the schools and the grades that are open. And the fact that still more data is likely to come through might well be what Motshekga is waiting for.

The Western Cape Education MEC, Debbie Schäfer, has said in a statement that the number of deaths of teachers in the province (30) “amounts to 0.84% of the total number of deaths in the Western Cape, and 0.07% of our teacher cohort”.

The point that is being made here is that while teachers may be more vulnerable to the coronavirus in schools, so is everyone else who’s back at work. This leads to another question: if the argument is that schools should be closed to protect teachers, then shouldn’t every workplace be closed? Which rather neatly goes back to the question Motshekga reportedly posed to the teacher union Sadtu in consultations last week: If schools are closed, why must teachers get paid? Particularly while so many other people are not being paid because they have lost their jobs.

It might be easy to claim that these fears are irrational, but they are not. For people who do not have easy access to information and experts, who have been told for the last four months by the media to radically change their behaviour, to stay away from each other, to wash their hands and to wear face masks, it is entirely rational to be fearful for their children.