The Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 has called on states, local governments and proprietors to prepare for reopening of schools. Chairman of PTF and Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, disclosed this during COVID- 19 daily news conference yesterday in Abuja.
The SGF said: “PTF wishes to use the occasion of this celebration to congratulate our children and assure them, their parents and all stakeholders alike, that all hands are on deck to reopen the schools at a safe time.
We therefore use this medium to urge states, local governments, proprietors and other stakeholders to begin to take steps that will facilitate an early and safe reopening.” But the Minister of State for Education, Hon. Emeka Nwajiuba, clarified that no date has been announced for the reopening of schools across the country.
There have been several information making the rounds on the social media, flouting several dates as resumption dates proposed by PTF on COVID-19 or the Ministry of Education. However, Nwajiuba who spoke at the daily briefing, noted that PTF has not announced any date. He disclosed that the Federal Government would rely on the opinion of experts and the guidance of the World Health Organisation (WHO), before announcing any school resumption dates. He said that the schools would not reopen until government was sure that the children could go to school safe and not infected with the deadly coronavirus or got infect by others.
The minister added that the ministry would publish what must be done before schools could be reopened by either private or public school. His words: “Until we are sure that our children can go to school and return safely without taking COVID-19 home, we are not ready to take the risk of opening schools.
“We want all our children to go to school by the time the schools would have been able to achieve physical distancing,” he said. According to him, government was working on a model to ensure that all the children do not return to their schools at the same time to ensure physical and social distancing as well as proper sanitation and hygiene at every school. “The plan entails adopting a two-shift system and allowing those who will write exams to return earlier than others,” the minister said. He urged state governments and owners of private schools to plan ahead on how to ensure maximum safety for students when the resumption plan was unveiled.
For secondary school students, the minister said that those in senior secondary might resume before their junior counterparts. He said the plan was that the children should resume by the time schools had achieved the physical distancing measure. “We may have classes in the morning and afternoon at the moment for the purpose of social distancing and all the infrastructure within the school will be used to achieve this,” the minister said.
He said that the ministry would also look at the sanitary condition of the schools before reopening, noting that schools must be ready to display manually- made hand sanitiser machines. Nwajiuba explained that for tertiary institutions, there would be the need to have a semester within a semester for the students. He added that while some courses would do their semester first, others would follow suit in a bid to maintain social distancing measure.
He urged lecturers in tertiary institutions to use the period to upgrade themselves. “Period like this should not be wasted and tertiary institutions must be functioning,” he said. He said that the only condition for reopening of schools would be that they must be ready to receive the students by providing all the needed materials to stop the spread of COVID- 19.
The minister also added that the Ministry of Environment had been mandated to fumigate all public schools ahead of resumption.
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