Every weekday, just after 3.15pm, a small group of Reception-aged children and their parents amble past my kitchen window, on their way home from school. The kids clutch bits of A4 paper bearing their artistic endeavours of the day, they eat after-school snacks, their animated chatter punctuating an otherwise quiet afternoon, a reminder of how life usually is.
These are my son’s classmates and it hurts me - and makes me feel so bloody angry - that he’s not out there with them, discussing PJ Masks and their make-believe games of good guys/bad guys and what birthday cake they’re going to have (in August), and anything and everything that’s important to four and five year olds.
These are the children of critical workers who, since the first week of January, have been permitted to attend school while others stay at home. The parents aren’t frontline workers. They aren’t doctors or nurses or supermarket workers or delivery drivers or teachers or police officers. They are simply fortunate enough to have jobs that appear on the government’s pretty exhaustive list of critical workers. The upshot is that around a fifth of my son’s classmates are at school, having face-to-face lessons, spending time with their friends. I have explained to my four-year-old why his best friend is in school and he isn’t, but how can he grasp the concept when I can’t?
I don’t love that my son has to be kept at home but I accept that it has to be this way in order to curb the spread of Covid-19. Yet as time goes on, I cannot shake off my resentment that some children are accessing school - and their parents are getting on with a day’s work - while the rest of us muddle through at home, trying to hold a career together whilst navigating the world of phonics/conducting science experiments/crafting paper plate pirates.
Neither of their husbands are critical workers. Has it not occurred to either of these dads that they could take on home schooling?
According to news reports this week, demand for school places in England is rising in lockdown. Department for Education figures show that about 850,000 of the children in England’s schools last week were the children of key workers, up from 813,000 the previous week. This is a problem on many levels. If school attendance is rising - in some areas, it is reported to be 50% - what does this actually do for driving down virus transmission? Meanwhile, the term ‘critical worker’ is deeply condescending. If you’re not on the list, does that mean that your profession doesn’t matter? That your contribution to the country’s economy means nothing?
My job is critical to me. It is critical to my mental health, to my sense of self, to my happiness and, in turn, that of my family. It is critical to my bank balance. The truth is, if you have a job that allows you to work remotely, whatever your profession, you cannot do that and be a teacher at the same time. I have a husband who is happy to do his fair share but he is the main earner so, on the whole, it falls to me to be the default educator. On some days it’s fine but on other days, when I’m trying to answer work emails/pacify an 18-month-old who is shouting for more raisins/generally feeling overwhelmed, it feels like no one is winning.
But there is something else going on here. Consider two of my female friends who have critical worker status - one works in education, another is a charity worker - and then consider that neither of their husbands are critical workers. Has it not occurred to either of these dads that they could take on home schooling? Or at least split up the working day with their partners so that each does their bit? For me, this feels like a depressingly sexist assumption that it’s the woman’s job to take care of anything childcare-related. I suppose the bigger picture is that it’s the failing of the government to get a grip on the pandemic. In putting us in the situation we’re currently in, they have divided parents, rather than unite us.
The other morning, I ran into another mum bringing her child to the school gates. “How’s it going?” I asked, to which she replied, flustered: “Well, we have an earlier start time now so it’s hard getting out in the morning.” It was all I could do not to shout that I get up two hours before the rest of the house to fit in my work and provide my son’s education. It’s pointless feeling enraged with other parents, but my son is missing out, while others are not. We’re all in this together, are we? It doesn’t look that way to me.