Back to School: Primary life lessons 

We asked parents of primary schoolchildren how they felt about the schools reopening. While a wide range of concerns was raised,  many said they welcomed the opportunity for their children to socialise with peers once again

Socialising with peers is key to children's emotional development, but when children return to school over they next couple of weeks, they will enter a changed school landscape. Picture: iStock 

Supported by a €375m government stimulus package, schools are set to reopen within the next week or so. It’ll be a school return like none other, with parents, children and teachers bracing themselves for new realities – demanded by the urgency of protecting ourselves from Covid-19.

And so children will enter a changed school landscape – classrooms reconfigured to facilitate physical distancing, classes divided into bubbles and into even smaller pod subsets.