This coming Thursday, a new curriculum in the education system will take effect, with the goal that all students in the education system will return to regular learning, while performing two antigen tests a week.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Education Minister Yifat Shasha Bitton and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz stood on the podium and brought a line to Israeli parents - but it is doubtful that all students and parents can enjoy it and it is very doubtful if it will happen immediately from next Thursday as this program seems less relevant. At its peak or in the middle.
The new policy seems to be in a situation where the education system was a month ago, when the percentage of patients in both the system and the population was relatively low, and in general, it is not certain that it is suitable for the next wave of the corona if it comes.
Recall, according to the program, students who have been exposed to a verified student will no longer be required to enter isolation - even if they are not vaccinated or recovering (exemption from isolation).
Students throughout the education system will be required to perform two home antigen tests a week - on Sundays and Wednesdays, prior to school day.
A student whose home test result is negative will come to the educational institution.
On the other hand, a student whose home test result is positive will not attend school and will be examined at a supervised test station (institutional antigen).
If the test result is negative - the student will return to school straight away.
If the result of the supervised test is positive - the student will perform five full days of isolation until recovery (subject to home tests on days 4 and 5 and a negative result in both).
The program will operate in kindergartens including nurseries, all elementary and high school students (high schools), yeshivas and boarding schools.
But the outline above is a number of real questions that currently no one has an answer to.
It is not yet known in which situations the outline will apply. Indeed, the Ministry of Health has issued a statement about the outline, but critical points in it are still unknown and have not been decided upon. The first is whether the outline will only apply to exposure to a verified patient within an education system. It is not yet known what will happen if the verified patient is not a classmate of the student but for example a friend he met in the afternoon or an instructor in the class. Will the same student who was exposed be able to do an antigen test and return to class immediately, will he be able to return without a test and have to be tested only on Sunday or Wednesday. In addition, the question arises as to whether the exemption granted to students from isolation will be valid only for the purpose of studies (as was the case in the green classroom) or will exempt them completely from isolation also for participation in large events. Another critical question is what happens if one of the student's family members falls ill with Corona, his or her parents or siblings - can he or she return to school immediately, or only if there is complete separation between them at home - something any isolated teaching knows is almost impossible. On all these issues,Which are critical and have epidemiological consequences are expected and must begin to be discussed this morning so that there is an orderly and clear plan and quite a few struggles are expected from various sources - between the strict ones in the Ministry of Health and parent leadership and Education Minister Yifat Shasha Bitton who would like to see as many students in classes.
The outline is not expected to prevent the severe shortage of teachers immediately. One of the critical problems that the Ministry of Education and its education system face is a severe shortage of teaching while teachers - kindergarteners and even assistants. These are four situations: teachers with corona (24,000), teachers in isolation (5,000), teachers whose children are ill and they are being cared for (their number is unknown) and teachers whose children are not ill but in preventive isolation (their number is unknown). Sick teachers cannot come to teach and so can teachers who are not vaccinated and are in isolation (because the outline that applies to students does not apply to teachers who are not vaccinated and about 20% of teaching staff, about 60,000 of them are not vaccinated). Even teachers whose young children are sick will not be able to get to schools because they will have to take care of them. Therefore, the new outline will provide a solution for only one type of teaching staff - those who until now had to stay at home only because their children were in preventive isolation. That is, the education system is still left with a shortage of thousands of teachers except this time all the students come to class.So in the short term a new outline could only exacerbate the shortage for this reason: as long as students were sent to large-scale isolation to the principal there was justification to transfer all classroom students to zoom and isolation teacher could teach from home, now most students can come - but teachers can not. It will be harder to find who will enter the classrooms.
And the responsibility goes to parents and the availability of tests: The Ministry of Health stated with the publication of the outline that students with symptoms are required not to attend school and be tested on a home antigen test - and in general the responsibility in the new outline passes to parents, even school corona trustees do not take part. Ann raises the question of how careful parents will be to do the tests since some parents are opposed to vaccines and tests and some face quite a few other difficulties. It is not yet known what document the parents will have to present about the tests and to whom. In addition, the Prime Minister promised that home test kits would be distributed to all students - free of charge. But the question arises as to where and how so many tests will be provided and how they will be prevented since antigen tests have so far only been distributed to kindergarten and primary school children. Therefore, it is worth looking at the numbers and the huge number of about 3 million students from different frameworks that this outline covers. The new outline includes all Israeli children in educational settings, including nurseries.The education system alone (ages 3-18) has 2.4 million students, in addition to which there are about 550,000 infants and toddlers from birth to three, about 400,000 of them belong to day care centers or nurseries included in the outline and in addition, there are boarding schools and yeshivahs. The bottom line is that 6 million tests a week are needed for this program alone, which entails quite a few logistical challenges.
The talk of a "brave decision" and what will happen in kindergartens. There is no doubt that the person who can be credited with the move is Education Minister Yifat Shasha Bitton, who called for the isolation of students for some time and fought in the Ministry of Health. She said that "we have made a brave decision in the government, to live alongside the corona. And the abolition of isolation for children is an important step for education" but that this decision comes too late when the education system is already beaten and bruised. Looking at the data, it is doubtful whether the decision is so brave, since every day that passes, the education system from France has more isolation exemptions that should not have gone into isolation in a meeting with a verified patient. As of last week last week out of 2.4 million students, one million (44%) were exempt from isolation (storage or recovery).If we add to this all the students who managed to be infected in the last week (the number of students with corona is about 200,000) and those who will be infected this week (until the outline takes effect) it seems that what the government did is buy time and add more exempt students to the education system. The new one will solve a limited part of the students. According to last week's data (no other data has been published so far) the lowest percentage of isolation exemptions is among kindergarten students (3-6). .
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