The big stranger in schools is called Delta. The coronavirus variant, which now determines the infection rate everywhere, is considered more contagious and now poses challenges for those who decide how and under what conditions the new school year should start. There is agreement not only in the German Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs, but also in other countries: If it is somehow possible, lessons should take place in the classroom again and not at home on the screen. But the risks that arise from this decision are dealt with differently, as a look at Spain, Israel, France and Denmark shows.
The starting conditions differ: In Spain it was decided in the previous school year to give priority to face-to-face teaching. Hardly any other country had kept schools open so consistently. Even France, long considered a role model for the Spaniards, closed schools in April. The newspaper El País asked at the time: “How does Spain manage to keep schools open while all other countries around them close them?” The answer: Politicians stuck to their decision, even as incidences rose.
This is one of the reasons why Spain is now entering the new school year with a certain amount of experience. According to Education Minister Pilar Alegría, the measures from last year will largely be continued. Individual details are even to be relaxed, for example the minimum distance from 1.50 meters to 1.20 meters, which will allow 25 instead of the previous 20 students to teach in one classroom. The mask requirement for children aged six and over and the requirement to keep the windows open in the classroom will be retained. Last winter, this rule led parents to send their children to school wearing several sweaters and blankets.
People act pragmatically in Spain
Pragmatism is probably the best way to describe how Spain feels about its decision to have face-to-face teaching. There are hardly any discussions like in Germany about a “contamination” of the schoolchildren. The past school year was also used in Catalonia to research whether schools are among the pandemic drivers. The answer given by the systems biologists at the Universidad Politècnica de Cataluña in their study: at least not under the applicable rules such as the mask requirement. According to this, every infected student infected between 0.3 and 0.6 people in the past school year. However, there is one crux to this data: At that time, the delta variant was not yet in circulation, which only became established in Spain towards the end of the school year. Especially in July, when the high school graduates were doing their graduation trips, the number of young people in Spain exploded.
The epidemiologist Salvador Peiró therefore assumes that children and young people are more likely to get infected during the holidays and that the measures in schools could even have a slowing effect on the infection rate. Spain’s pediatricians recommend that vaccinated students do not have to be quarantined in the future if they have had contact with an infected person. This should be an incentive to vaccinate, although hardly anyone in Spain has to be persuaded to vaccinate. The vaccination rates for teaching staff are between 92 and 95 percent. And in the age group of 12 to 19 year olds, 72 percent have already received a first dose, 32 percent are fully vaccinated. In time for the start of the school year, the number of infections also fell, and the fifth wave in Spain seems to be over.
And quickly put on the mask: In front of a primary school in Tel Aviv.
(Photo: Amir Cohen / Reuters)
On the other hand, the starting conditions for the new school year are somewhat poorer Israel: Here the school begins in the middle of the new Covid chaos with record numbers of infections. And yet politics gives priority to face-to-face teaching. School in Israel always begins on September 1st, this year the day was stylized as a symbol of a new beginning. The President, Prime Minister and half the cabinet flocked to the schools. “This start of school is the clear message that we have to live with the coronavirus,” announced the government advisor Salman Zarka, who is responsible for fighting the pandemic.
Even six to eleven year olds will soon be vaccinated
A whole bunch of measures in Israel this year is to prevent the 2.5 million students from having to be taught via Zoom, as they did in almost the entire previous year. At the start of school, families were not only sent book lists, but also quick tests. The classroom was only allowed with a negative result. In advance, 343,000 children between the ages of three and eleven who could not be vaccinated had already been subjected to a serological test; almost ten percent had antibodies. You no longer have to be quarantined when classmates fall ill. Israel’s government continues to rely on vaccinations for its students. In the future, these should also be available in classrooms. 50 percent of 12 to 15 year olds and 80 percent of 16 to 18 year olds are currently vaccinated at least once. At the start of school, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett expressed the hope that vaccinations in the age group of six to eleven year olds could start in two months.
In France the summer vacation ended on Thursday for more than twelve million students. For the rentrée, a cherished ritual for the entire country, Minister of Education Jean-Michel Blanquer has proclaimed the motto “as normal as possible”. In other words: as much classroom teaching as possible. Since the second and third lockdowns (autumn 2020 and spring 2021), the French have known that this is not just a promise. Schools in France remained open for a long time, while Germany tried homeschooling again for weeks. It was only in March that President Emmanuel Macron announced that the spring break would be extended by a week.
Macron and his education minister did not rely on air filters and mass tests, but on optimism. France’s students were not protected from infection. But politicians assessed the social and psychological consequences of the school closings as more serious than the possibility of Covid 19 disease. This basic assessment has not changed at the beginning of this school year. In addition, there is the comparatively high vaccination rate among young people in France.
More than 64 percent of twelve to eighteen year olds have received at least one dose of vaccine, almost 50 percent have complete vaccination protection. During the summer vacation, the Minister of Education announced that vaccinated students do not have to be quarantined, even if their bank neighbor was infected with Covid-19. From the age of six, it is mandatory to wear a mask, classes should not be mixed up. If a Covid case occurs, elementary school classes should be in quarantine for a week. Teachers’ unions complain that the protective measures are too lax in view of the incidence in France; nationwide, the value is currently just under 170 infected people per 100,000 inhabitants in the past seven days.
Denmark takes a different approach compared to many other countries. A few weeks after the start of the school year, the country wants to abolish all corona restrictions on September 10. For this government plan, schools are one of the major risk factors. It is based on the record vaccination rate of the Danes, 72 percent of the population are already fully vaccinated, which is one percentage point more than in Spain and the highest figure in Europe. However, the pupils are outliers: In Denmark, almost 60 percent of the twelve to 15-year-olds received their first vaccination, but younger children are not vaccinated.
Denmark’s Princess Mary opens the first international primary school on the island of Lolland.
(Photo: Images / PPE)
There have already been regular outbreaks in schools in Denmark, and epidemiologists expect the number of infections among children to rise rapidly in autumn. Schools should only be closed if there are 30 or 40 infected people. Danish policy is based on the fact that children fall ill less often and that the disease then usually turns out to be mild. The question remains to what extent the delta and possible new variants of the virus will affect children in winter. And will the schools not be the first places in Denmark where the restrictions will be reintroduced?