The next few Mondays are going to be critical for the education sector, which officially returns to operations as of today.
Next week, school managers are set to return, followed by teachers the week after and then some pupils on Monday, 1 June.
Those pupils will be matrics and Grade 7s, after which other grades will be phased in.
But I am hearing many parents with serious concerns about sending their kids back to school at all this year.
One of my friends has decided that her matric son’s life is more important, as she put it, so he will stay home and rather repeat matric next year.
There is no way to police social distancing in a school environment, especially among young kids, who will want to play and interact with each other.
That kid going home and infecting his parents, who then go and infect their colleagues at work, is a real and worrying possibility.
Government will have to think long and hard about how to address this particular problem. This is a tough one, but I think we may all have to face the fact that the 2020 academic year is a write-off.