This is the Land depopulated of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in the North-East and the great city of Hamburg, which open the way for the return of a vacation in Germany. The students returned to school Monday in Mecklenburg, where the infection rate is the lowest in the country and only 150,000 students, and the small Burgers return to the classroom this Wednesday. In the other fourteen States, the return will be at the dropper and will run until mid-September. The Bavarian will be the last to go back to school on 14 September.
In Germany federalist where education is the responsibility of the Länder, the holidays are in effect staggered and hygiene measures in the face of the pandemic differ from one Land to the other. The strategists of the regional dig the head for months and have come to define a catalog of different rules in each state. This patchwork of regulations reflects the added headache of the re-opening of schools while the number of infections Covid-19 is on the rise and that several virologists herald a new wave at the end of beautiful days.
Read also Coronavirus : the pandemic does not
The basic principle on which everyone is agreed in Germany : the students must return to school in the fall, all together, normally, and full-time. It is on the measures to be implemented for ensuring food safety as the concepts diverge. While in most Länder the wearing of a face mask is mandatory in the corridors and in the common areas of schools, the Rhineland-North rhine-Westphalia, where the start was held on the 12th of August, has just ordered the mandatory wearing of the mask into the classrooms of schools, colleges and professional schools. For the primary pupils, the mask is mandatory in the common areas. As soon as they are in their seat in their classroom, the more young people are allowed to drop the mask. As for the teachers, if the premises are too cramped and that they are not able to comply with the distancing regulatory 1.50 metres, they will also need to bring their mask. This rule is valid in a first time until 31 August in the Land in the most populous country of Germany, particularly hard hit by the virus. The authorities will then have a balance sheet and decide if it is necessary to extend this measure. The entire staff of Kindergärten and schools may, if it wishes, to test free of charge every fifteen days up to the autumn holidays.
Read also Anti-vaccine, neo-nazis, old hippies..., the amazing procession of anti-coronavirus Berlin
Cohort
In almost all Länder, of the free tests will be regularly made available to teachers and educators. The decision to generalize the wearing of the mask, has triggered the Rhineland-North rhine-Westphalia a storm of protests by teachers ' unions and student associations. By the ambient temperatures, the wearing of the mask is a constraint untenable, ' they protested. Bavaria, which resumes classes on September 8, has already announced that, in the event of a deterioration of the health situation, the small Bavarian will also be obliged to wear their masks during the course.
In the rest of the country, the regions wish to apply the principle of the " cohort ". The rule is simple : to allow groups of students (age groups, different classes on the same floor) to work without a mask even in their classroom, but limited to the maximum that these groups are well delimited, with each other in the hallways, in the playground, in the canteen and in the toilets, where access is limited to one person at a time. Thus, if the virus begins to spread within a "cohort," only the students who are part of it will be sent home and quarantined. The other will be able to continue to attend classes, and the facility will remain open. In Berlin and in several Länder, the song inside of buildings shall be prohibited. Free choir to meet in the open air in the playground or in a park. Sports, music (except for the courses of wind instruments, where the students will have to do their lines in the open air), and the theatre will again be allowed.
On the compulsory education for children of fragile health or who live with a sick person, some Länder are more flexible than others. In Baden-Württemberg, where the reentry will take place on September 14, the parents who do not want their children to go back to school and choosing to pursue the online education will simply inform the management of the establishment, while in most other Länder, a medical certificate will be required. In Saarland, the students exempted from course must take part in the examinations. Schools will be required to make available classrooms that will be reserved.
the return to normal, an illusion
If these rules are good on paper, while the world ignores at the moment if they will be applicable. Some teachers 'trade unions find already that this return to normal is an "illusion" and highlight the risk that the reopening of schools threatens the entire population. Some facilities are too cramped to be able to comply with the rules of detachment, do not have a number of toilets, sufficient or lack of staff, because the teachers are in the older or suffering from diseases that make them vulnerable have already announced that they would not return to teach. How to apply these measures when the temperatures will drop and it will not be possible to leave the windows open or to sing in the court ? All this without counting with a second wave that would call into question these strategies. Person at present can not rule out the possibility of a new containment and a return to teaching at a distance. The home schooling has more or less worked according to the institutions and families. To arm themselves in the event of another school closure and to avoid the improvisation more or less effective in the first months of the pandemic, the Länder have equipped the schools with additional computers. Hamburg has ordered 39 000 new laptops.
Read also The fabulous destiny of high school graduates syrian
Remains the thorny problem of the return of the holiday. The Länder have asked the families who spent their holidays in a high-risk country to observe a quarantine of fifteen days before sending their children to school. But as this quarantine shall not encroach upon the date of reentry, it was decided that the students who fail the first fifteen days of class would be considered as "dryers" and punished. The minister of health, Jens Spahn has also announced the introduction of free tests available in the 72 hours after returning from vacation. "The virus doesn't take a holiday ", he cautions.
