I want to talk about covert 19 and Children.

We are at a defining moment for the world's Children and young people.

The decisions that governments and partners take.

Now we'll have lasting impact on hundreds of millions of young people and on the development prospects of countries for decades to come.

Governments around the world are having to decide where the Children could be.

It's school.

It's one of Joe Biden's top goals.

It should be a national priority to get our kids back into school and keep them in school.

It's the same in the UK There's nothing I want to doom or thin reopen schools on.

Most Children want to get back to.

We've lost a bit of the mentality toe want to lean because last time we were all head start doing it, and now it's like, Well, how long am I going to be doing this?

For now, I think there are a lot of things that make it really difficult to learn at home.

People seem to think that it's just a similar idea of school.

You go on an online class when you're supposed to be in class, and then that's fine, but it's much more tiring than that.

Of course, in an ideal world, everyone wants schools back.

The issue is how to do that safely for Children on for staff.

A number of teachers will still be concerned on perhaps feeling a little bit of the other communities in the main.

And so the question remains.

How to educate Children in a pandemic.

I'm gonna look at the science around, covered in schools, the different options available to governments and the impact right now of Children being stuck at home because it's hard to overstate the importance of getting Children back to the classroom.

Here's the W H.

O.

There is hugely important part of our social educational architectures, the baseline of our civilization on.

But we can't turn schools into yet another political football in this game.

It's not fair in our Children.

It's also hard to overstate the scale of what's already happened.

This is the UN's Children's charity, UNICEF.

The sheer number of Children whose education was completely disrupted for months on end is nothing short of a global education emergency on To help us understand the urgency here, we need to look at the pandemics impact on education and the numbers are shocking.

UNICEF estimates that during the first peak of the virus, 1.6 billion Children in 192 countries were sent home in December 1 in five schoolchildren, 320 million.

We're still out of school, and some Children are much more seriously affected than others by this.

That's dictated by three intertwining factors.

First of all, government policy.

Different countries have chosen different routes.

He's a Kenyan Children going back in January after the authorities closed schools for nine straight months.

The second factor is the prevalence of the virus and how that impacts school closures.

This is Brazil.

Latin America has some of the highest rates of co vid, and Children there have lost four times as many days as those in the rest of the world.

On the third factor is the kind of education Children can access while they're at home, Children in lower income families or living in lower GDP countries are less likely to be able to access online learning.

This is one father and son in Jamaica.

I don't have the Internet from my kids, then my kids in reaching nowhere in life, you know, it burned my heart more.

Them sitting at home can go to school.

I want to get my education.

All of which means the U.

N.

Describes the situation this way.

The coverage 19 pandemic has led to the largest disruption of education ever.

It's not just about short term disruption.

There's a long term warning to now We face a generation no catastrophe that would waste and told human potential and their mind decades of progress and exacerbate entrenched inequalities.

Well, to try and avoid that, governments want Children back at school as soon as possible on a number of strategies of being explored.

They all begin with the science andan assessment of how to make sure teachers and Children stay co vid safe at school.

Now we know that the virus spreads inside schools in a way that's directly connected to the way that it spreads outside of schools.

Here's the W H.

O.

Again, there are many countries around the world in which schools are reopening successfully on safely because countries have dealt with the real problem community transmission.

So in countries like Australia and New Zealand, where community transmission is very very low schools can open.

Those countries, though, are the exception right now.

Look at these numbers.

This is the global infection rate.

It's decreasing, but it's still much higher than it waas for most of last year, and in most countries the virus is not contained.

It's spreading within the community.

So what do you do about schools in that situation?

Well, the authorities in the US suggests that schools can still open.

We know that most of the disease that comes into the school comes into the community.

And with universal mask wearing, we know that there's very limited transmission within the schools on.

But that transmission is largely from staff to staff.

The argument here being with the right measures in schools and across the community schools or not a particular risk.

Here's more from the 500 it says the outbreaks do occur in school settings.

Multiple studies have shown that transmission within school settings is typically lower, or at least similar to levels of community transmission.

When mitigation strategies are put in place in schools, the point being not that there is no risk, just not a greater one.

This, though, is not a closed discussion, as the HUFFPOST UK put it at the end of last year.

Keeping schools open and lock down has polarized the U.

K.

And now they're closed.

There's a similar debate about whether toe open them and to assess this, we need to break this down into two considerations.

One is the health risk, the Children and teachers from the virus and the other is the risk that they'll pass the virus on to others.

Well on health advice for Children is very clear.

The chances of Children being catching cove it and then getting a long term serious problems as a result of it solely due to going to school are incredibly small.

Then, on the risk that Children can pass the virus toe others well, it varies according to age.

As the W H O explains, There appeared to be differences in transmission among the youngest Children transmitting less to each other.

Um, compared to teenage Children, which appeared to transmit at the same rate that adults do.

And that brings us to teacher to teacher adults, adult transmission in schools, as we've seen in the U.

S.

That is an issue here is the president of the American Federation of Teachers.

Ultimately, all the risk is on the adults who are doing the education.

That's why we're trying to make sure that things are safe.

But we know that the benefits are huge for kids.

That's why we're trying to take this risk.

Some teachers in the U.

S.

Went further, demanding not just better safety measures in schools but also the vaccine before they would go back.

This clip is from MSNBC on the verge of a strike.

Chicago public schools will not return to in person learning as planned today.

The authorities, though, didn't agree with that, nor teachers in the UK being prioritized for a vaccine on.

Perhaps these disagreements are inevitable.

Just after school shut again in the UK in January, The Guardian published this article by Professor Debbie Shredder.

She's chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh.

Under the headline When should UK Schools reopened for all pupils were told, there is no simple answer on.

After reviewing available data, Professor Shredder concludes, the issue is far from clear cut.

The science is still unfolding.

But she adds that when we look at European data, we may have overestimated the effectiveness of closing schools now if we looked at the risk to teachers and pupils and the scale of the disruption to Children.

The final consideration here is broader government policy, because schools are part of a broader calculation here for examples.

Take Scotland is currently in lock down, and its government has choices about where to ease those restrictions.

First, it could be hospitality, or in this case, it will be schools.

We are very deliberately choosing to use the very limited headroom we have right now to get at least some Children back to school because Children's education and well being, it's such an overriding priority.

But being able to get Children back to education may mean the rest of us living with some other restrictions for longer.

That is a choice.

It's the manage risk of opening schools in exchange for the known benefits for Children.

Next, you could look at Denmark.

It was one of the first countries to reopen schools, and they've largely remained open.

It uses smaller local lockdowns to contain outbreaks on its number of cases, and deaths are below comparable European nations.

Or there's Israel is prioritized vaccinating students.

So they can sit exams in South Korea.

Well, it went to great lengths to ensure exams went ahead.

Temperatures were tested, students separated and doctors in P P delivered exam papers to the few in hospital with covert 19 thes Airil calculations judgments.

But governments are now making these decisions amid an avalanche of information on the catastrophic consequences of closing schools, both now on for decades to come.

This the chair of the Education committee in Westminster.

We need to do everything we can to be saved.

But there could be an epidemic off educational poverty, a growing digital divide.

Onda safeguarding crisis.

We're vulnerable Children being affected by mental health.

For these reasons on, many mawr governments are pushing to get schools open again because while there are many elements of this pandemic, we don't fully understand the detrimental consequences of closing schools are already in plain sight around the world.