Just 10% of parents feel comfortable that their children could be returning to school on 1st June.
For most parents, their children are the thing they care most about in the world and they do everything in their power to keep them safe and away from harm. It is a strange situation then, that when in the middle of a pandemic they are being asked to send them back to the classroom when most of us are being told to stay at home.
With politicians and local authorities disagreeing on the best course of action, we wanted to know what parents thought about this and how they felt about the possibility of sending their kids back to school on the 1st June.
With all the uncertainty floating around about Covid-19 it is not really surprising that 58% of parents that we polled did not feel great about the prospect of sending theirs kids back to school in just a few weeks.
With 32% of parents unsure as well, it shows that most parents aren’t totally convinced now is the right time to be opening schools, despite what the politicians are saying.
One anonymous quote we had from the eOpinion community said this:
Based upon information available about the stats and children of this age then the risk is small. The benefits of school outweigh the risks at present. Also we can’t keep children off forever and this situation will not be resolved by September. There are risks with all illnesses eg severe reaction to chickenpox, Scarlett fever etc but children don’t avoid school because of this.
A whopping 74% of UK parents believe it should be up to them and no-one else when their offspring should return to education. With all the uncertainty around is this surprising? The government are saying we should open schools and some local authorities are saying we shouldn’t, there are many mixed messages around the virus, different countries adopting different measure with differing levels of success and ultimately parents want the right to decide the fate of their own children.
Laura Abbott from Newcastle said this:
To be quite honest I don’t fully trust the politicians and am far from convinced they actually have any real idea how this disease is going to play out in the future. If this is the case, why should I let them decide what is or isn’t right for my son’s.
This question in our Speedy Poll on this topic looked to cause the most uncertainty. 31% of parents said Yes, they would refuse to send their kids to school if they didn’t feel comfortable. The largest proportion, 53%, said they were unsure which I suppose isn’t overly surprising with the potential penalties and recriminations of your children effectively being truant. I suspect unsure may translate in to sitting on the fence and seeing how this all plays out.
Confidence is not high among parents
Uncertainty and fear among parents, unsurprisingly, means many are not looking forward to 1st June where they’ll have to make some pretty important decisions.
Despite many kids across the country causing havoc with working at home parents or newly appointed home school teachers and some parents no doubt not being able to wait to get some breathing space, it is pretty clear that despite the politicians best efforts of getting schools reopened, parents up and down the country are nowhere near 100% sure this is the right decision and ready to send their children back in to education.
The survey was conducted on eOpinion.org with 2,138 people on 18/19th May 2020 and is nationally representative.
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