Jess Casey: Better communication is key to the schools conundrum

Parents have been told schools are ‘controlled environments’ compared to playdates and sleepovers, but what difference does it make if they mix outside of school or at the panto, when they share a desk together five days a week?

Of course, there is a risk to children attending school during the pandemic, albeit a smaller one than an adult, as they have less of a chance of becoming seriously ill. Photo: Rollingnews.ie

This week the much-maligned catchphrase ‘schools are safe’ was finally, surely, put out to pasture.

This paper begged in January for the phrase to be retired because it is a bureaucratic catch-all, extracted and truncated from a complex message we’re still trying to wrap our heads around. There is nowhere here ‘safe’ from Covid-19 anymore really, bar being on your own in a sterilised bubble.