Japan’s Approach for re-opening the schools

When one of the parent in Japan was asked “Is it right to open the schools ?”, the parent replied “Kids are playing in park already, hence instead of having them in uncontrolled area better to send them to school and allow them to study & play at a place which is controlled and have disinfectant facilities”.

At the same time when the number of infected patients are increasing in countries like US, Spain, Italy, Iran and other countries along with complete lockdowns in UK, India and some other countries, people are worried of reopening the schools. Specially now when the Olympics have been postponed due to the same reason, what guidelines are given by government to resume the schools. Parent are also asking “Is it really the right time to reopen the schools under such uncertain circumstances?”. Apart from Japan, US is the only country who is talking about bring back life to normal from mid-April.

■ Approach
Japan Government is taking the approach as per the clusters. As posted earlier, there are 13 such clusters identified and the areas have to take appropriate approach as per the information below.

The Japan government has issued some guidelines for the schools to resume after spring break.

■Guideline is bare minimum and very broad

Government said that Schools to avoid following three major conditions and suggested how to do it ?

Avoid	How ?
Closed and poorly-ventilated spaces	Thorough ventilation
Crowds of people	Use of face masks in close-range conversations
Verbal communication at close range	Suspension of students who are either confirmed infected or have come into close contact with infected people

One might be but surprised that are those enough ? People are also questioning that are the schools ready for masks and measures required to prevent any outbreak ?

The guidelines call on school operators to take the steps to avoid the three conditions during entrance ceremonies and other school events as well as extracurricular activities.

■What happens in case a student is found infected with Covid19?

The guidelines also include advice on how to respond to situations such as confirmed infections of students or teachers. They ask school operators to consult with local health officials and decide whether to suspend only those found infected and people who have come into close contact with them, or to temporarily close the whole school or parts of it.

In case of temporary suspensions again, government advices schools to give students home assignments as much as possible to avoid loss in syllabus coverage.

Even no one can assure it would be 100 safe, one parent summarized it as “Considering schools have been closed for a month already. All up for it with appropriate monitoring and precautions. Based on data we see, Japan seems to have things somewhat controlled. However as tokyo governor said if we see sharp increase in the cases, tokyo might need to be locked down.

The truth is it’s not healthy to keep this lock down any longer until absolutely necessary.” Adding to the view “This is not going to completely end in few weeks or months. We will need to learn how to deal with it taking necessary precautions. It’s going to be a long war so cannot hibernate forever. We cannot eradicate completely in weeks or months.Until everyone gets vaccinated or something we will have to learn to deal with it sooner than later. Lock downs for elderly can be longer”.

Apart from other measures, some schools in Japan for example Indian International School in Japan (IISJ)are already trying their classes on cloud video conferencing softwares like Zoom for students from grade 6th to grade 12th which can be even more safer way to resume the studies for kids and try to bring back the education to new normal just like how some corporates are trying to counter the circumstances.

It appears the Japan’s approach is not only to fight with Covid19 but also how to live with it too and co-exist.

Do let us know your opinions on what you think about these measures ? How would you respond to these measures?

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