As the school year progresses, some European countries are ditching school mask mandates and strict quarantine rules.

Across Europe, countries are fine-tuning school policies to minimize educational and social disruption while still keeping children safe.

In mid-August, I wrote about how many European countries would not be masking children during the upcoming school year. A month later, I documented how many European countries were modifying quarantine and testing strategies, such as implementing “test to stay.” In this post, which is hardly an exhaustive list, I summarize some recent changes across the continent and try to explain the broader policy-making context.

Let’s start in Ireland, a country where cases in schools are plunging. Following a review by government health experts, Ireland’s coronavirus response team recently reaffirmed that primary school students should not have to mask, while noting it is still too early to consider lifting the mask mandate for secondary students. Ireland’s main public health body is concerned that masking primary school students may interfere with language development.