Parents around the world not happy with schools reopening

Published May 25, 2020

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CAPE TOWN - A study from Ipsos, released last week, shows that only two surveyed countries are comfortable with their kids returning to school.

The Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, announced last week that grade 7 to 12 learners will be returning to schools on June 1, causing an uproar amongst the South African parents.

With many taking to social media, online petitions and the creation of various social media groups, most disagree with the idea of schools reopening on the beginning of the new month despite the precautions mentioned by the Minister of Basic Education.

The study by Ipsos was conducted from May 7 to 10th via online platforms surveying a total of 16 000 participants between the ages of 16 to 74 with 1 000 surveys allocated to each country. Some of the participating countries are South Africa, Brazil, Canada, Italy and Japan.

According to the study on 20percent of South Africans are ‘very comfortable’ or ‘somewhat comfortable’ with the return of children to schools, while only 31 percent of the total participants from around the world feeling the same.

“In terms of children returning to school, majority of respondents in Italy and South Africa (56 percent), followed by Canada and Spain (53 percent), are ‘not comfortable’ with doing this in the coming weeks,” Ipsos says in the news release.

“People in Brazil are the most against children returning to school, with more than two in five respondents (44 percent) saying they definitely wouldn’t do this, followed by Japan (30 percent), and the United States (28 percent).

There are only 2 countries mostly comfortable with the return of their children to schools, Australia (59 percent) with 7 109 current infections and South Korea (49 percent)) with 11 206 at the time of publishing.

The news release states “The countries most divided on this are some of the world’s biggest emerging markets, including China with 3 percentage-points difference, separating those that are comfortable from those that are not, followed by Russia and India.”

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