Schools Resumption: Education Minister Presents Date, Strategies To National Assembly

 The Minister of
State for Education, Mr Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, on Tuesday presented to the
National Assembly a proposed date for the reopening of schools across the
country as a post-COVID-19 measure.

He made the presentation
during a meeting with the Senate Committee on Basic and Secondary Education on
the ministry’s plans for pupils who have been forced to stay at home following
the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While noting that
government had said that schools for some categories of students would be
reopened soon, Nwajiuba said that giving a tentative date would result to
misrepresentation by the public.

“We said we are going to
experiment with some people and these are children from exit classes.

“In the document we have
provided, we have suggested how we can move our education sector forward in
this pandemic period.

“We don’t want to make it known
at this period so that some people will not take our proposal for guidelines
for schools reopening.

“This is because people
publish fake guidelines every day which I always come on air to debunk. What we
have now is a proposal.

“Even if the
Senate has not called us, we would have come to you to discuss with you because
we have already discussed with the House of Representatives.

“The documents were presented
to you so that you can criticise and make inputs as major stakeholders”.

He, however, expressed concern
over the decision of Oyo State Government to reopen its primary and secondary
schools in spite the current rising cases of Coronavirus infection in the
country.

Nwajiuba wondered why the
government of Oyo State which was currently battling with increase cases of new
infections, should be eager to throw open the gates of its schools when its
neighbouring states, were employing caution.

He said, “Why is Oyo State
talking of reopening schools when it has just started recording increase cases
of Coronavirus infection.

“Just beside Oyo is Ogun which
was part of the three states under the FG’s lockdown since April is not talking
about schools reopening.”

Vice Chairperson
of the Committee, Sen. Akon Eyakenyi, who presided over the meeting, expressed
the fears that the academic calendar could be distorted in public schools where
no visible arrangement was being made to teach the children at home unlike their
private schools counterparts.

She said public schools
students were made to rely on educational programmes on radio and television
stations whereas they tune to stations showing cartoons whenever there was no
adult to guide them.

Eyakenyi said that children in
public schools had no access to online classes like their counterparts in the
private schools.

She noted that the arrangement
regarding radio and television stations was not working.

“Even when the students in the
cities have access to education programmes on radio and televisions, what of
those in the villages? What do we do so that we don’t shut them out?

“If government can give
guidelines for the reopening of churches and mosques, stakeholders in the
education sector could also hold a meeting with the government to agree on
guidelines for schools reopening.

“All we need to do is to come
up with measures that would ensure the safety of both the students and their
teachers.

“We can design a plan that
would make sure that not all the students resume at the same time. We could
probably start with the exit classes.

“We could have the numbers of
students that would go to school in both the morning and afternoon sessions.

“We have to be innovative in
our approach to save our educational sector in this country because nobody
knows how long the virus will be with us.” (NAN)

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