COVID – 19 AND THE REOPENING OF SCHOOLS

The Federal Government will on Tuesday be meet with State Governors to discuss modalities for schools resumption and the level of preparedness by the different States.

It would be recalled that schools have remained shut since march due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Presidential Taskforce on Covid19 had on Monday last week announced the resumption of schools for graduating students, while schools activities and learning remained suspended.

As the Minister meets with State Ministries of Education, there is every tendency that school activities and learning may be suspended till 2021 because most of the states are not ready due to the spike of new cases of the coronavirus.

It will be suicidal to reopen schools in states like Lagos, Delta, Edo, Enugu, Ebonyi, the FCT where the increasing number of new cases of the coronavirus is enormous and the curve of the virus infections has not been flattened.

Even if the State Governors decide to reopen schools, many parents may not allow their children and wards to resume.

Reopening of schools in the middle of the battle with the dreaded coronavirus pandemic is like sitting on a time tomb, especially when Nigeria does not have the facilities and capacity to adequately deal with the uncontrollable number of infected persons.

The Federal Government should apply caution in reopening of the schools.

Advanced nations that hurriedly reopened schools have shut down again due to new cases of the coronavirus infections among the students and teachers in the schools.

The Federal Government and State Ministries of Education should develop and deploy e-learning and Radio and Television learning for this year and consider reopening the schools in 2021.

The Government should take into consideration the fact that almost all public schools are overcrowded, which  will make it difficult for the students to maintain physical distancing.

Also not all schools will be able to maintain and keep the guidelines of Covid19 on resumption, while the monitoining of schools, especially those in the rural communities cannot be guaranteed.