Schools are back and lots of children are enjoying seeing their friends and having some sort of normality and many teaching staff are enjoying getting back to work.

There is also lots of apprehension and recent reports have highlighted that the situation with coronavirus is still very delicate and the virus, sadly, is still out there.

After just a week, some teachers and pupils are being told to stay away, stay at home and self isolate as there have been a spate of coronavirus outbreaks across the city’s schools.

According to the Birmingham Mail online, this involves hundreds of pupils across the city:

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/hundreds-birmingham-school-pupils-sent-18892323

There is advice from the NHS about what to do if we are told to self isolate:

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/self-isolation-and-treatment/when-to-self-isolate-and-what-to-do/

It is more tricky when you are told that your child has to self isolate and for many, balancing childcare with getting back to work is going to be difficult. It also raises questions about how safe it is for the rest of the household to go about their business as normal as you cant really self isolate young children, surely?

Perhaps more guidance needs to be issued on this as it raises so many questions. It’s difficult for policy decision makers as this is still such a new and unknown situation and it’s difficult for us, members of the public, to have to make decisions about what is the right thing to do.  If you have any thoughts that you’d like to share on this, please get in touch support@esl.uk.net

Children need to be educated and employees need to work but for now, unfortunately, it seems there will be stops and starts.