Under what health criteria will we accept that a child can stay at home during the school year?
Virtual schools for students at home
Students who will have to stay at home this year for medical reasons will attend virtual schools in certain places, where classes will be centralized and can be taken care of by teachers who have been granted exemptions to work from home. Already, several service centers are busy setting up such remote schools.
In late spring, several teachers whose schools had been reopened pointed out how difficult it had been to care for both students in the classroom and those left at home, by choice or not.
Although in-person attendance is mandatory at school this year, some students will be able to attend homeschooling if they have a doctor's paper justifying it. It is for them that these schools are established.
In the mad scramble for doctor’s notes, Quebec’s health department has released new guidelines to help doctors figure out which children are considered too sick to risk heading back to school this fall.
It’s 21-pages long and basically says only very sick children should stay home even some children being treated for cancer, or with varying levels of asthma are not exempt from heading back to the classroom
The head of Quebec’s association of pediatricians, told media that “In general, those who shouldn’t be going back are the same as those who don’t go during flu season, and no, most exemptions do not include siblings or parents".
Back-up schools
If a student has to be absent and quarantined, he will be taken care of by his school, explains the president of the Quebec Federation of Educational Institution Managers.
After the hiccups of last spring, when many students were left without computer equipment, preparation seems to be going well. The only pitfall: some students do not have access to the internet at home and live in places where the cellular network that would provide the internet does not reach.
It's still unclear what we'll do with these students. We are looking for solutions. There aren't many students in this situation, but there are. - Nicolas Prévost, President of the FQDE
In his back-to-school plan presented earlier this month, Education Minister Jean-François Roberge said that in the event of a class or school closing, the Distance learning begins within 24 hours.