An online petition created by students protesting against a planned return to school next month has collected almost half a million signatures. The organisers say that returning briefly before the summer holidays is “unnecessary”, and will be “confusing” and “stressful” for pupils, especially those taking exams.
Apart from the youngest children in primary school, pupils in Poland have been learning remotely for almost the entire time since March last year. Schools reopened in September, but were closed again the following month and have remained so since.
The first three year groups of primary school began to return to teaching in classrooms this week, and older year groups are scheduled to do so in May, under a timetable announced by the government yesterday. By 29 May, all pupils are due to be learning in person.
However, a group calling itself “Pupils’ Protest” has launched an online petition titled “Return to school from September 2021”. It had attracted almost 500,000 supporting virtual signatures by Thursday afternoon.
“A return to school for less than two months is unnecessary and will only confuse pupils in years 7 and 8, who during this period are studying intensively for exams,” reads the petition. The exams are due to begin on 25 May, just a few days after those year groups return to school.
The authors also say that children will be “worrying about the number of [Covid] deaths and cases on a given day” and “stressed” by the process of having to return to school after so long away.
“We are opposed to the return to full-time education this school year and would like our voice, the voice of all students, to be heard,” they write.
It is not known how many of those to have signed the petition are students, parents or teachers. One member of Pupils’ Protest, Dominik, told Gazeta Wyborcza that they had been receiving 50 messages a day from students worried about returning to school.
“It’s worth it for the first-years to come back, but for the older years it’s just unnecessary stress,” Milena, a year seven pupil, told TVN24. Marcin, an eighth grader, said he was worried that if someone is infected in his school, he would have to quarantine and miss his exams.
“I go to a boarding school where there are people from all over Poland,” said Oliwia, a high-school student. “We use shared rooms. We mostly go home at weekends. I think that [returning to school] will significantly increase the number of cases.”
While teachers were one of the priority groups to receive vaccines, many will not receive their second dose until some time in May.
“It is understandable that some of them do not feel fully safe yet, and we know how difficult it is to maintain social distance in overcrowded schools,” Sławomir Broniarz, president of the Polish Teachers’ Union (ZNP), told TVN24.
However, Broniarz said that he believed a return to school was in the best interests of children, including for their mental health. ” I believe that if we are disciplined, if we follow sanitary rules, we will be able to protect ourselves from the virus,” he added.
Poland’s education minister, Przemysław Czarnek, has also sought to reassure concerned pupils, teachers and parents. “The last month of the school year [will be] a time for students to rebuild relationships with their peers and a sense of community,” he told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) on Wednesday.
“I am calling on principals and teachers to…devote the time until the summer holidays to strengthening children’s self-esteem and rebuilding relationships,” he added.
At a press conference today, Czarnek promised that there would be catch-up classes and psychological support for returning pupils. “I can say this: take it easy,” said the education minister. “Stress is part of life, but no one will give the pupils extra stress.”
Main image credit: Grzegorz Skowronek / Agencja Gazeta
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
