Schools re-opening

Push against re-opening

Then on Sept.10, unconfirmed reports emerged of a draft strategy to re-open schools for final year students only. The Minister of Education, First Lady Janet Museveni, who has previously communicated to the nation, was quiet. All officials were equally quiet.

But according to what appeared to be leaked documents, schools were expected to re-open on Sept.21, barely a week after a six-month lockdown. The limited timeframe suggested the move was a fumble.

And social media commentators made a mountain out of the apparent lack of strategy.

“Schools were locked down in March with just one case of COVID-19 in the country; they are being opened with 4000 cases. Why?”

Daniel Ndawula wrote on The Independent website: “Is this well thought out? Has the government put into consideration the private schools that handle the majority of the learners? Is it cost effective for the private schools to open for only the candidate classes? Has government made a survey to establish whether parents can afford to pay fees?

Okoth Ogenda wrote: “This is a very brilliant decision done at a wrong time. Please COVID-19 is real and dangerous. Can young children manage to observe the SOPs? If health workers are getting infected and dying in big numbers; how about these innocent souls? What is the hurry for? These children are here to stay. I would propose the Ministries come together and design better plans to start next year for all levels of education.

“Do parents have the money to take children back to school in the next two weeks? Are teachers there?

“Anyway, only universities and post-secondary education levels would be opened first this year as we study the trend of events. We should learn from South Africa’s experience. Let’s not put politics in this situation of COVI-19.”

The comments, which almost uniformly opposed re-opening of schools, came as a surprise to many observers.

In all the month since schools were shutdown, very little attention had been paid to the tough decisions that parents need to make regarding their re-opening. One of the toughest decisions by a parent would be whether to allow his/her child to return to school or not. All parents would have to consider the question of the basis of health. Is it safe for schools to re-open, especially now when numbers of community infections are hitting unprecedented highs?

But many parents would also have to make a financial decision. Many parents who have been out of work for months or on half or erratic pay due to COVID-19 restructuring, do not have money to pay school fees. So schools might re-open but find few students showing up.

Tough choices

Returning children to school remains a tricky subject around the world. Even though the symptoms of COVID-19 among children tend to be mild; some studies have suggested that children can play a major role in spreading the virus to each other and vulnerable adults, raising the risk of another wave of infections.

Many countries are reopening schools though. In South Africa, school children have returned to class even if the country has been one of the hardest hit by COVID-19 on the continent.

And education experts have been warning of a crisis in Uganda’s education system if learners remain locked at home and the 2020 academic year is declared null and void. For some it is an issue of future planning, for others it is about lost time and money, and for what appears to be a majority, it is about health and safety.

James Tweheyo, the former general secretary of Uganda National Teachers Union (UNATU), told The Independent in an earlier interview that it does not make sense to keep schools closed when other “more disorganised work spaces such as markets and public transport have been reopened.”

“What is more risky; to open the market or a school? The taxi park or the school? Do you think the school children (at home) are not mixing with other people?” Tweheyo insists the risks for contracting the coronavirus would be handled better in a school setting.

“Closing the academic year would be unrealistic since we are not yet sure when COVID-19 will end. We don’t know if it will go away in one year or even five years,” Tweheyo told The Independent.

At the time Tweheyo spoke, on June 19, Uganda had registered 755 confirmed COVID-19 cases from 162,026 tested samples in a country of 43 million people. That was just 0.4% of the population tested. No case of death had been reported.

But as of Sept.10, when unconfirmed reports emerged of a draft strategy to re-open schools for final year students only, Uganda had registered a cumulative total of 4377 registered COVID-19 cases and 49 deaths. An average of 100 new COVID-19 cases are being registered every day.

To cope with such situations, schools all over the world have had to introduce new tough hygiene Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) in an attempt to safeguard learners and service providers.