The call to reopen education – from primary school to university – immediately after the Christmas holidays is growing. In an open letter, Thursday, Unicef Netherlands and 59 other organizations argued that schools should never be closed again to fight a pandemic.
The outgoing cabinet will meet on Monday to discuss whether schools and universities can reopen on January 10, after the Christmas holidays. A week before that holiday, all educational institutions, sports facilities, catering and non-essential shops closed, after the Outbreak Management Team advised. The reason was fear of the highly contagious Omikron variant of the coronavirus that spread quickly in Europe last month, while the booster campaign in the Netherlands started slowly.
Until a day before the latest lockdown, outgoing Minister of Education, Arie Slob (ChristenUnie), said the schools would not close.
The importance of children plays too small a role in the considerations about corona policy, UNICEF writes, also on behalf of the Scientific Association for Psychiatry (NVvP), GGZ Nederland and Defense for Children.
Also read this interview with Minister Slob: ‘Closing the schools is a defeat’
In an explanation, Esther Polhuijs, children’s rights expert at UNICEF, points out that various studies show that children and young people are inhibited in their development and are damaged by lockdowns. “The means of closing schools is too drastic, it has been taking too long and the uncertainty as to whether it will happen again is too great. This is the third school closure and it lacks a substantiation. Once again the caretaker cabinet has thought in crisis mode: go, we close the schools. But then explain how closing schools contributes to fighting the pandemic. And don’t contrast the ‘acute death of patients’ with the long-term mental damage children and young people suffer from lockdowns. Because then the acute argument always wins, but that is not a fair contradiction.”
‘New measurement moment’
Since Thursday, some Dutch scientists have also questioned the continuation of the lockdown – and certainly the closure of education – now that the contamination with the Omikron variant appears to be milder.
Virologist and OMT member Menno de Jong (Amsterdam UMC) said on Thursday on the local channel AT5 that “a new measurement moment must be quickly established to see whether the hard lockdown is still justified. We are getting close to having data on whether the current lockdown is necessary. And the first dates are favorable.”
Emeritus professor of virology Willy Spaan, who is moderately critical of the cabinet’s choices on social media, doubts whether school closures are still justified. On LinkedIn, he writes that there is a “much less serious threat than could have been suspected a month ago”.
Amsterdam primary schools have already announced that they will open to students from group eight if the school closure is extended. Education lawyer Wilco Brussee – who does not legally represent any of the schools involved – sees legal possibilities for the plan. The law that regulates school closures has two exceptions: teaching in schools is allowed when it comes to students in their final year and students in a ‘vulnerable position’. Brussee: “I think schools can argue that students in group eight with the Cito test are in a comparable position to high school students in their final year.” In addition, believes Brussee, schools can designate these students as vulnerable, because they have already fallen behind. Brussee: “The explanatory notes to the law state that schools can determine for themselves whether a student is vulnerable or not.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 31 December 2021
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of December 31, 2021
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