The New York Times has an interesting story today about the varied approaches to reopening schools in Europe. The common threads are testing, smaller classes, and social distancing.
NEUSTRELITZ, Germany — It was Lea Hammermeister’s first day back at school after almost two months at home and she was already preparing for a test.
Not a math or physics test. A coronavirus test — one she would administer herself.
Ms. Hammermeister, a 17-year-old high school junior, entered the tent erected in the schoolyard along with some classmates — all standing six feet apart — and picked up a test kit. She inserted the swab deep into her throat, gagging slightly as instructed, then closed and labeled the sample before returning to class.
It took less than three minutes. The results landed in her inbox overnight. A positive test would require staying home for two weeks. Ms. Hammermeister tested negative. She now wears a green sticker that allows her to move around the school without a mask — until the next test four days later.
“I was very relieved,” she said happily. In addition to feeling safe around her classmates and teachers, who all tested negative, she feels like less of a risk to her grandmother, who eats with the family every day.
The self-administered test at the high school in Neustrelitz, a small town in northern Germany, is one of the more intriguing efforts in Europe as countries embark on a giant experiment in how to reopen schools, which have been shuttered for weeks and which are now being radically transformed by strict hygiene and distancing rules.
Restarting schools is at the core of any plan to restart economies globally. If schools do not reopen, parents cannot go back to work. So how Germany and other countries that have led the way on many fronts handle this stage in the pandemic will provide an essential lesson for the rest of the world.
“Schools are the spine of our societies and economies,” said Henry Tesch, headmaster of the school in northern Germany that is piloting the student tests. “Without schools, parents can’t work and children are being robbed of precious learning time and, ultimately, a piece of their future.”
Countries across Asia have already been making the leap, experimenting with a variety of approaches. In China, students face temperature checks before they can enter schools, and cafeteria tables are outfitted with plastic dividers.
In Sydney, Australia, schools are opening in staggered stages, holding classes one day a week for a quarter of the students from each grade. Hong Kong and Japan are trying similar phased reopenings. In Taiwan, classes have been in session since late February, but assemblies have been canceled and students are ordered to wear masks.
For now, Europe is a patchwork of approaches and timetables — a vast laboratory for how to safely operate an institution that is central to any meaningful resumption of public life.
In Germany, which last week announced that it would reopen most aspects of its economy and allow all students back in coming weeks, class sizes have been cut in half. Hallways have become one-way systems. Breaks are staggered. Teachers wear masks and students are told to dress warmly because windows and doors are kept open for air circulation.
Germany is keeping a wary eye on the rate of virus spread as it moves to reopen.
Germany has been a leader in methodically slowing the spread of the virus and keeping the number of deaths relatively low. But that success is fragile, Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned.
On Saturday, the reproduction factor — the average number of people who get infected by every newly infected person — which the government wants to stay below 1, crept back up to 1.13.
With still so little known about the virus, many experts say mass testing is the only way to avoid the reopening of schools becoming a gamble.
The school in Neustrelitz is still an exception. But by offering everyone from teachers to students free tests twice a week, it is zeroing in on a central question haunting all countries at this stage in the pandemic: Just how infectious are children?
Evidence suggests that children are less likely to become seriously ill from Covid-19 than adults. But small numbers of children have become very sick and some have died, either from the respiratory failure that causes most adult deaths or from a newly recognized syndrome that causes acute inflammation in the heart.
An even greater blind spot is transmission. Children often do not have symptoms, making it less likely that they are tested and harder to see whether or how they spread the virus.
The prospect that schoolchildren, well-documented spreaders of the common flu, might also become super spreaders of the coronavirus, is the central dilemma for countries looking to reopen while avoiding a second wave of deadly infections. It means that school openings could pose real dangers.
“That’s my biggest fear,” said Prof. Michael Hoelscher, head of infectious diseases and tropical medicine at Munich University Hospital, who oversees a household study in Munich that hopes to shed light on transmission inside families.
Manfred Prenzel, a prominent educationalist and member of a panel advising the German government on its reopening, said children represent the most intractable aspect of this pandemic: asymptomatic transmission.
A study published in Germany last week by the country’s best-known virologist and coronavirus expert, found that infected children carried the same amount of the virus as adults, suggesting they might be as infectious as adults.
“In the current situation, we have to warn against an unlimited reopening of schools and nurseries,” concluded the study supervised by Christian Drosten at the Berlin-based Charite hospital.
The Robert Koch Institute of public health, Germany’s equivalent of the C.D.C. in the United States, found that children get infected in roughly equal proportions to adults.
Other studies, including two from China, suggest that children may be less contagious than adults, possibly because they often do not have the symptoms that help spread it, like a cough. Researchers in Iceland and the Netherlands did not identify a single case in which children brought the virus into their homes.
“The evidence is not yet conclusive,” said Richard Pebody, team leader for high threat pathogens at the World Health Organization. His advice on school openings: “Do it very gradually and monitor the ongoing epidemiology very closely.”
That is easier said than done.
For now, Europe’s school openings are as varied as its countries. Denmark opened primary schools and nurseries first, reasoning that young children are the least at risk and the most dependent on parents, who need to return to work. Germany allowed older children back to school first because they are better able to comply with rules on masks and distancing.
France is opening preschools on Monday before phasing in primary and middle school children later in the month. High school students will keep learning remotely for now.
Belgium, Greece and Austria are all resuming lessons for select grades in coming weeks. Sweden never closed its schools but has put in place distancing and hygiene rules. Some hard-hit countries like Spain and Italy are not confident enough to open schools until the fall.
One precondition for any country to open schools, epidemiologists say, is that community transmission rates be at manageable levels.
Early evidence from countries that have led the way in lowering community transmission and opening schools looks hopeful, said Flemming Konradsen, director of the School of Global Health at the University of Copenhagen.
Denmark, after letting younger children back more than three weeks ago, announced last week that the reproduction factor of the virus remained below 1. Older students will be allowed to return to school on Monday.
Germany, Europe’s biggest country, announced last week that all children would see the inside of a classroom again before the summer break after a two-week trial run in high schools had not stopped overall transmission numbers from falling. Officials hope the rise that was reported over the weekend was a blip instead of a sign that the loosening is already reviving the spread of the disease.
Many argue the benefits of opening schools — to economies, parents and the children themselves — far outweigh the costs so long as hygiene rules are put in place. Disadvantaged children in particular suffer from being out, said Sophie Luthe, a social worker at a Berlin high school.
“We have been losing children; they just drop off the radar,” Ms. Luthe said. “School is a control mechanism for everything from learning difficulties to child abuse.”
But teaching in the time of a pandemic comes with a host of challenges: In the high school in Neustrelitz, roughly a third of the teachers are out because they are older or at risk.
There are not enough classrooms to allow all 1,000 students to come to class and still keep six feet apart, which means at most a third can be in school at any one time. Teachers often shuttle between classrooms, teaching two groups at once.
At the same time, the virus is spurring innovation.
Teachers in Denmark have moved a lot of their teaching outdoors. German schools, long behind on digital learning, have seen their technology budgets increase overnight.
“Corona is exposing all our problems,” Mr. Tesch, the headmaster in Neustrelitz, said. “It’s an opportunity to rethink our schools and experiment.”
That’s why he did not hesitate when an old friend, who co-founded a local biotechnology company, offered the school free tests for a pilot. Mr. Tesch said he hoped the testing would allow him to increase class sizes safely and restart activities like sports and the orchestra.
Many experts advocate more testing in schools but so far it remains the exception. Luxembourg, tiny and wealthy, tested all 8,500 of its high school seniors before opening schools to them last Monday.
Some students and teachers in Neustrelitz were skeptical when they first heard that the school would offer voluntary biweekly tests.
“I didn’t want to do it at first,” recalled Kimberly Arndt. “I thought, ‘What if I test positive? I’d be pegged as the girl with corona.’”
The incentive to test is high: A negative result allows students to wash and disinfect hands in bathrooms where lines are much shorter. Corona-negative students do not have to wear masks, either.
Mr. Tesch, the headmaster, acknowledges that his school is able to test only because he was offered free kits. Normally they would cost around 40 euros, or $44, a piece. But the government, he said, should consider paying for similar testing at all schools.
“It’s a lot of money,” he said, “but it’s cheaper than shutting down your economy.”
What’s NEEDED are “Systems CONTROL engineers” and “Classroom Teachers” working together.
and there you have exactly why so much of what will be imposed in the fall here in the US will fail — no teachers allowed into the “solutions” room
I think schools are essential so extraordinary measures to open them are completely justified.
My own child is really tiring of “distance learning”. He’s lost most of what he likes about school. I expected him to tire of it- he’s an extrovert and clearly enjoys the social aspects of school, but his girlfriend is not an extrovert- she’s quiet (and a much better student than he is) and I’m worried about her. She seems sad, to the extent that I ask him to text her and check on her. I suspect she’s organized her whole life around school – hence “very good student” – and she’s just lost. I don’t think she has a particularly happy home life so perhaps school was a good place for her.
One major mistake I think they are making iin Neustrelitz, Germany is not requiring EVERYONE to wear a mask.
No test is perfect and there is also the possibility that someone could become infectious between one test and the next.
The main function of a mask is to keep someone who is infectious from spreading it to others and if the mask is not required, one undermines this entirely.
Schools should open if for no other reason than if they don’t open, ed reform will take away in-person classes and replace them with cheap junk:
“Yet while there’s much to rue about what the pandemic has taken away, it’s possible to glimpse a future in which technology liberates high school students — or at least some of them — from the six or seven-hour school day that has been crushing teenage souls for generations. That’s worth celebrating because so much of the school day amounts to wasted time.”
They’re very big on efficiency. They’ll destroy everything kids like about school AS A COMMUNITY replace it with “playlists” and 50,000 tests.
They will never, ever understand why public schools are valuable to people and communities. It’s ideological- it’s a market-based focus on the individual as a consumer of services. You can’t separate this “movement” from this belief- it’s part of the DNA.
There’s no recognition, at all, that kids operate in a context. That the social part of school is NOT “wasted time”.
Only the clipboard toting denizens of ed reform could reduce the entire school community experience to “seat time”
Once again, pitching something in the trash that they don’t understand and don’t value.
I am confused by the many references to tests as a major feature of the process of opening schools.
According to one informed report, there are at least 22 different COVID-19 tests on the US market not including many more in varied stages of development and with different intended contexts for administration.
You can find a list of work in progress under “Test Kit Manufacturers and Commercial Laboratories Table” at https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/emergency-situations-medical-devices/emergency-use-authorizations#covid19ivd
I have no idea which tests, at what cost, might be available as part of the opening of schools, how long the turn-around time for results might be, how reliable the tests are, and how often they need to be administered. Why does there seem to be a black box around these matters?
Then there is the matter of chasing down contacts for persons identified as having COVID-19 by some test (of as yet unknown reliability). If found, those persons are supposed to be isolated, quarantined. How does that work if the children are minors, and if the adults–teachers, parents, caregivers–must also be put under lock-down?
Who is responsible for enlisting, training, and paying for the people who will do the contact tracing? Training for this job is being offered online and free through Coursera, with hourly pay ranging from about $8 to $30 per hour. How do schools secure waivers of privacy laws that surely must be compromised to track cases? How are the trackers screened to eliminate bad actors?
There are many other issues including food service, and transportation especially by bus or subway, scheduling changes, how disinfecting works when one room hosts multiple classes, and teaching materials are shared… as in science labs and visual arts programs.
As usual, supporters of charter schools, vouchers, online instruction and holdovers from the Obama administration have published a “blue print” for reopening schools. This document is designed to position the American Enterprise Institute (and other belief tanks) as the best source of wisdom about schooling.
The AIE Blueprint has some useful information, such as the proportion of teachers who, by age, are currently deemed at high risk for infection, and Whitehouse guidance documents, but overall the recommendations for schools are far from being a blueprint for anything other than a bureaucracy preferred by Rick Hess and associates at AIE. https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/A-Blueprint-for-Back-to-School.pdf
In contrast, I think that detailed plans are shaping up in many districts around the country. For example, this is a May 7, 2020 plan for Cincinnati, proposed by teachers. http://cft.oh.aft.org/sites/default/files/article_pdf_files/2020-05/cft_resolution_our_lives_our_safety_on_reopening_school_approved_may_7_2020_0.pdf
If you want to understand why this administration’s free-market policies for test development have put us in limbo and makes the mantra of “testing, testing, testing” little more than hopeful rhetoric, read this discussion by an MD and Associate Director of Microbiology, University of California San Diego. https://theconversation.com/there-are-many-covid-19-tests-in-the-us-how-are-they-being-regulated-134783
And for more important and relevant news 😷, the German Bundesliga, the best (again 😂) soccer league in the world, will restart this Saturday. The games will be in empty stadiums and the teams are remain in quarantine, living and practicing together as they are regularly tested. There’s an apocryphal story of a journalist who was unfamiliar with soccer and observed professional soccer in Europe asking a coach, “It seems to me that here, football (soccer) is a matter of life and death.” The coach answered, “No, it’s much more important than that.”
I’m a teacher and I dread going back to school. Even if we find ways to social distance, we could have hundreds of people in the building at once. Students and staff will be using the same bathrooms and common areas. We know the virus can survive in the air for 2-3 hours and on surfaces for a number of hours or days depending on the surface. How is cleaning going to happen during the day at school? I’ve asked students to cover their mouths when they cough and sneeze and sometimes their answer to me is to cough or sneeze right out into the air. I’ve asked them to try not to touch their faces and they immediately do so. I’ve watched students come out of bathrooms without washing their hands. I watched them eat and lick their fingers and then touch tables, desks, books and other objects. Schools are a petri dish for germs in the very best of circumstances let alone during a viral pandemic (and then combined with the flu season). IF we do go back to school in the fall, under what circumstances will we close again? If one person tests positive? 5 people? 20 people? How will “they” decide it is too unsafe to continue being in school? How will schools accommodate teachers (and students for that matter) who have underlying conditions? What if those staff/students have people at home with underlying conditions? These are some of the questions I have. I’m not hearing many answers yet.
Toward the end of the piece, the statement is made that German schools were “long behind on digital learning”. No, they were way ahead by protecting their society from the dehumanizing isolation and resulting individual control that ‘digital learning’ promotes.
“So how Germany and other countries that have led the way on many fronts handle this stage in the pandemic will provide an essential lesson for the rest of the world.”
There is one guaranteed exception.
There is one world leader that is totally incapable of learning anything from anyone and his name is Donald Trump. The world might unify under one strategy but Trump will not.
Open schools for 3 weeks so that kids can get free babysitting while their parents work? Who buys this as responsible? Doesn’t it sound like a measure pushed by corporations who want their profit producing workers back?