School reopening strategy must prioritise health and safety
After around 18 months of closure, the fact that schools and colleges are finally on the path to opening up is a positive development. When the announcement to reopen on September 12 was made by Education Minister Dipu Moni on Friday, she said the authorities had made all arrangements for reopening, and that they would strictly monitor whether health and safety protocols were being properly implemented and maintained at educational institutions.
While we fully support the long overdue resumption of education, we are concerned to see that schools and colleges have been given barely 10-days' notice about the resumption of in-person classes. According to officials from both education ministries, examinees of this year's four public examinations will attend classes every day after the reopening, whereas students of other classes will have in-person classes once or twice every week. But what about the conditions of these classrooms, which have been abandoned for almost 1.5 years? How clean are the buildings and the facilities? Are any of the utilities, like electric lines or water pipes, in need of repair?
During a meeting on Thursday, the National Technical Advisory Committee on Covid-19 recommended reopening schools in phases—and despite the reduction in Covid-19 infection rates, it stressed on the importance of mandatory mask-wearing, socially distanced seating in classrooms, and clean washrooms with arrangements for washing hands with soap. The director of the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE) also said recently that students' body temperature would be screened before allowing them to enter classrooms. While such directives are commendable, we wonder how schools with limited funds and space will implement them without specific and planned interventions by the government.
According to a report in this daily, several education ministry officials said they would be able to prepare a final guideline on reopening schools by this week. However, that leaves schools with less than a week at hand to make arrangements to follow this final guideline properly. Given that these schools are now faced with the daunting task of making up for the learning loss of millions of students, we would not be amiss to suggest that this guideline should have been prepared well in advance and shared with schools and colleges before setting a date for starting in-person classes. From the very beginning, experts have suggested that simply reopening schools is not enough—there must be a comprehensive teaching-learning plan to compensate for learning losses, and special focus should be given to children from marginalised backgrounds, possibly with the help of NGOs and community organisations. So far, it is unclear whether any of these suggestions have been incorporated into the strategy for reopening schools and colleges.
The authorities must ensure that this reopening is not done in a haphazard manner that will ultimately put students and their families at risk. The ministries of education have had more than a year to plan for this. The return to education must be part of a well thought out strategy that places the health and safety of our students at its very centre, while ensuring that their transition back to education and their recovery from learning losses is a smooth process.
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