Rome, 3 September 2021 – All in class without mask, indeed not if there is someone who is not vaccinated. And a few days after the first bell of the new school year – the second entirely conditioned by the pandemic – it is the question of masks to wear in the classroom for students to hold the bench. Were the words of the Ministers of Education Bianchi and of Health Speranza, said yesterday at the end of the council of ministers, on the possibility of lower the masks in the classrooms where all the students are vaccine to trigger controversy and doubts. The risk, say the principals but also many students, is that there may be marginalization against those pupils who will not be, or cannot be, vaccinated. A possibility by no means remote – especially with the vaccination campaign certainly not completed among the youngest – against which the Undersecretary for Education has also lined up, Barbara Floridia.
Summary
But some come from sources in Viale Trastevere today clarifications: “The possibility of removing the mask in classes made up of students who have everyone completed the vaccination cycle is foreseen by the decree of 6 August with the urgent measures for the start of the new school year “. In addition, the Ministries of Education and Health,” also taking into account the aspects related to privacy, they are now working on the implementation of this novelty which absolutely does not want to create discrimination, but rather to allow a gradual return to normality inside the classrooms in correspondence with the progress of the vaccination plan “.
At this point it is a race against time since there are a few days left to the beginning of the school year. But in any case, at the sound of the first bells it will be complicated to have entire classes of vaccinated people, despite the fact that today the goal of 60% of under 19s with at least one dose of the vaccine. While the 8,500 Italian schools are finalizing the plan in view of the return (the first will be, already on Monday, those of Bolzano), there are numerous doubts which are raised by insiders. Compared to the vaccination level of the school staff, the Miur has communicated 92.1% of the staff has done at least the first dose, but it remains a 8% who have not yet been vaccinated.
And if the test on the green pass seems to have been passed with flying colors – albeit with some irreducible teacher sent home – now to worry the school leaders are also the announcements on the masks: “In the classrooms there will always be someone from not vaccinated – replies the president of the PNA (the National Association of Principals) Antonello Giannelli – And this will create one uncomfortable situation, with the risk of marginalization by the boys who would like to remove the mask. Think, for example, if in a class of 25 students there is only one without a vaccine, how will this boy feel? “And then there would also be the obstacle of the school’s inability to ask for information about state of health of the students. “It could be remedied – concludes Giannelli – with a super app, like the one that will have to be launched for teachers, with which it is possible to know which classes are fully vaccinated without having to ask each one for certificates or documentation “.
Concerns about the stop to the masks were also raised by the movement of parents while the specialized newspaper “Tuttoscuola” instead sent to the minister Bianchi a series of questions right on the question of masks. Who and with what tools will control the boys? What will be the implications in the relationships within the classrooms? The risk, feared by the newspaper, is precisely what “factions” of “good and bad”. But at this point the new indications which will be carried out also involving the Privacy Guarantor and with the health authorities.
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