With Singapore firmly in the midst of the Omicron wave, Singaporean parents are starting to speak up once more about how they feel that schools aren’t doing all they can to prevent transmissions and keeping out the infected.
While browsing Facebook, I came across this on the Complaints Singapore page.
It’s a very valid worry.
I’ve personally seen a WhatsApp message (I’m unable to post it here as the person who showed me the message was uncomfortable in letting me do so) meant for teachers of a certain school that shows that about 50% of the teachers in that school are out of action because they’re infected or under quarantine.
Let that sink in for a minute. About HALF of them are not working. The message didn’t mention how many students were on MC, but I reckon it’s definitely a big number too.
No wonder then that parents have lost all confidence that schools are safe.
The worry that not much is done to lower the risk in schools is aggravated by the fact that local schools seem lax in their implementation of checking who can be in school or not.
Some Singaporean parents are even suggesting a return to HBL (Home Based Learning) for the next few weeks or months as a way to both ensure the safety of their kids and to lower the climbing infection rates in schools.
While it is true that kids don’t seem to suffer serious complications due to Covid-19, they can easily transmit it to other people who may be at risk due to their health, age or other reasons. Then those people can unknowingly transmit it further…and so on.
Parents being worried about the seemingly lackadaisical attitude schools seem to be taking are compounded by other external factors too; the irresponsibility of the adults, some of them fellow parents.
While it is regrettable that some parents have no other alternative but to send their kids to school even if they’re unwell (whether it’s Covid-19 or something else), it’s still unacceptable, especially to other parents and their kids, not to mention society at large.
The fact of the matter is that Singaporeans parents are right.
While we might be going for a living with Covid-19 strategy, surely schools and the Ministry of Education can do more to ease their fears?