June arrives tomorrow and lockdown continues through one of the most glorious periods of early summer weather that I can recall, but despite the sunshine I would guess that most of us are still spending a lot of time at the ranch, reading. Everyone will have seen the national discourse concerning easing the current restrictions, the reality of people starting to bend the rules to breaking point and the apparent disagreement between the politicians and the scientists as to what should happen to balance health and economic recovery in the short term. Schools are a central part of the debate and I am sure that you will have seen the government guidance for secondary schools which advocate partial re-opening for Years 10 and 12 from 15 June; if you haven’t then the guidance can all be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/preparing-for-the-wider-opening-of-schools-from-1-june/planning-guide-for-secondary-schools.
In response to this we have drafted the necessary detailed risk assessment which should enable us to mitigate the areas of risk that are under our control here in school, but there also unquantifiable risks for students travelling in to BWS if they have to use public transport. We understand this – and we also understand that there may be parents who feel that this is not the right time to reboot face to face education. For that reason though attendance will be encouraged it will not be compulsory. The detailed documents will be made available on the coronavirus webpage immediately BWS governors have approved them, which is likely to be at the end of the coming week.
Finally – and diverting partially (but certainly not entirely) away from current events, I came across a review by the BBC’s Will Gompertz of a short story by E.M. Forster. Entitled ‘The Machine Stops’ and written over a century ago it has striking parallels to what we are all experiencing at the moment. There is source material for later writers embedded here – for Orwell, H.G. Wells and Wyndham – but just as interestingly Forster makes a number of observations about future communication, about isolation and the development of AI; they all seem worryingly familiar. Have a read – it takes around 30 minutes of uninterrupted lockdown time to do so…
SDS
