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Students may be allowed back into schools in small numbers in the weeks and months ahead, but full-scale classroom instruction will remain suspended, according to a bulletin from the Ministry of Education.

Education and school-based child care during the COVID-19 pandemic will look very different for the foreseeable future.

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As part of a plan to ensure that service and support is available to essential service workers only, “a limited number of students will be present in-person in schools at any given time to allow for sufficient physical distancing,” it says.

The ministry is working with the provincial health officer and the B.C. Public School Employers’ Association on hygiene practices “to ensure the health and safety of staff and/or students who are present in schools now, and in the weeks ahead.”

Districts are considering a variety of online and traditional paper-and-pen learning systems, depending on whether families have computers or tablets and internet access. Many will adapt materials already in use by parents who home-school their children.