Coronavirus: Push to reopen schools reveals confusing messages

Prime Minister Scott Morrison gives a coronavirus update on Friday. Picture: AAP

A lot of Australians are understandably confused about what they should or shouldn’t do with their children when it comes to returning to school.

The Prime Minister has declared schools are safe. Relying on the medical advice of his expert panel, he says children don’t significantly spread the virus, and there is no evidence that returning to a schooling environment is dangerous. He has even said that social distancing between students isn’t necessary at school, which presumably means they can play sports, muck around together in playgrounds, and hang all over one another safely.

But this is where the doubts for many people creep in.

Kids can apparently do all of that at school, but they can’t go to the local playground, which is closed for safety reasons. They can’t go to the beach together, for safety reasons. And they can’t go to one another’s homes to study or just hang out, because that’s not safe either.

Over the weekend I saw children being moved on by police who were they together in a similar way during a school lunch break, they would be doing exactly what the PM says is A-OK.

And while early on in this crisis the PM used the example of Singapore to justify schools remaining open, that island nation went on to close schools. And when Singaporean schools are open, safe social distancing is employed, masks are worn, and temperatures are tested.

A very different approach to what the PM is recommending.

Indeed in New Zealand the biggest cluster of COVID-19 came from a school on the North Island, challenging some of the research suggesting schools are safe.

The inconsistencies get more stark when we compare Scott Morrison’s pledge that schools are safe and social distancing isn’t necessary to what some state leaders and medical experts are saying.

The Victorian chief health Officer, Professor Sutton, says schools being open for Term 2 isn’t safe, tweeting out a thread explaining all the reasons why. The NSW Premier is only reopening schools in a staged process – why do that if schools are so safe? Why not just open them immediately?

There is a new study out of NSW by medical experts in the field suggesting schools are safe, but it isn’t peer reviewed and the authors themselves acknowledge their data set is distorted because when they embarked on the study so many parents were already not sending children to school.

Many people worry that even if children don’t spread the virus as significantly as adults, what about the safety of the teachers? Indeed if they don’t spread it as significantly as adults, but do spread it nonetheless – which they do – how does that play out when they aren’t socially distancing before going home to parents, carers and grandparents? Especially when any of whom have immune deficiencies and the like?

What the government perhaps doesn’t want to focus on is the fact that of course there are risks in reopening schools, but they believe the broader risks of keeping them closed are greater – social disadvantage, lost learning, and the mental health consequences. Not to mention the notion that if things are going to open back up, you have to start somewhere.

That may be all good and well, but it does come with risks. And that is why some parents remain sceptical.

Peter van Onselen is Political Editor at Network 10 and a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australian and Griffith University