The new playground.
Office spaces are changing, workplaces are changing, nursery schools are changing.
Primary schools are also changing.
A primary school has sparked fury among parents after it revealed its social distancing plan, which would see children as young as four playing in hula-hoop ‘bubbles’, pupils being given set times to go to the toilet and students being told to clean up their own cuts if they fall over.
Holywell Village First School in Northumberland, has come under fire over the plans, which they have suggested will be put into place when pupils return to the classroom on June 1.
In a now-deleted post on the school’s Facebook page, seen by Metro, the school said pupils will be assigned ‘play bubbles’ where they will have to stay when they go outside to the playground.
The instructions were accompanied by a picture to show how it would work if they reopen as expected on June 1 – with hula hoops placed in rows across the ground marked with an x in the middle.
The post also said children will be given specific time slots for going to the bathroom ‘and will not be allowed to leave the classroom outside of their allocated toilet times‘.
Parents also raised concern about children having to ‘do their own first aid’ if they scrape themselves.
The post read: ‘If they fall over or have a toileting accident they will be encouraged to change themselves and clean their scrape or cut.
‘We have sourced PPE (following the COVID 19 guidance for Educational Settings) which is for use only for staff protection should a child vomit, not for trips, falls or scrapes.
‘If it is not possible for the child to clean themselves in the event of an accident, the parent will be called to collect them so they can do that at home.’
The post was deleted after it was shared thousands of times, and parents criticised the new measures.
Mum-of-three Kristina Richards, 29, told the Metro: ‘How on earth can children in reception and year one have an allocated toilet time? They are young kids and if they need to go to the toilet then they need to.
‘No child aged 4/5 should have to clean up their own cuts. And if they can’t do it then a parent will be called. What if that parent is now back to work?
‘Does that mean this child has to wait maybe an hour until a parent arrives to change their child’s soiled clothes or clean their bleeding legs? It’s ludicrous.’
Others raised concerns that parents would not be allowed to enter the school and there would be no hot meals.
The school said the ‘drastic’ changes were enforced to ‘keep staff and children as safe as possible’.
Your entire life is changing. All of these things are being done to you for your own good. The government knows exactly what to do in order to keep you safe, and it knows without a shadow of a doubt that the most important thing for you in your life is to keep yourself safe from stuff, even if you don’t know it yet.
It may sound insane right now, but after you spend a hundred years of life in complete isolation, safe from viruses and safe from human contact, you’ll look back at this moment and realize how wrong you were and how right the government was.
You’ll look back at 2020 and thank the overlords for making you live a long, lonely, meaningless life.