Schools to remain closed in September – Education Minister

Education Minister, Priya Manickchand has announced that schools will remain closed in September, as authorities continue to review and evaluate the situation amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ever since her appointment just over one week ago, Manickchand would have engaged stakeholders in the health and education sectors, along with the Guyana Teachers’ Union on if it would be possible to reopen schools next month.
These discussions, she noted, revealed that the main concern was keeping educators and students safe. However, over the past months, little action was taken to prepare for a possible reopening, pushing back the date to a later time when these provisions would be completed.
“The truth is there was little or no decisive; and/or coordinated approach to achieving that balance of delivering education and doing so safely. Actions that were needed in the months schools were closed were not taken in their entirety or not at all. This is our reality. We, therefore cannot reopen schools on September 7 as was previously scheduled. All schools shall remain closed to face-to-face teaching for the month of September while we continue to review and evaluate the evolution of the disease and our schools’ readiness,” the Minister said.
She pointed out that for schools to be reopened, schools and their respective administrative bodies need proper protective gears and facilities to enable safe learning. In the coming weeks, the Ministry will engage in creating such an environment.
“How else then would we balance the urgent need to have a rapid, sensible, coordinated, national approach to delivering education with keeping our children and teachers safe was the burning question that confronted us. For the safe face-to-face reopening of schools, we need to know epidemiological patterns. We need to have masks for students and teachers, to have hand-washing facilities and clean schools; and we need to have the ability to practice social distancing,” Manickchand highlighted.
Discussions would have also revealed that there was no holistic approach within the past months in the delivery of educational sessions while concerns were shared about the implications of missing formal academic engagements.
“We learnt that many students have not been academically engaged in a structured manner from March to now. We have been told of the tremendous loss of income of families and the worry of parents, teachers and community leaders that this will result in premature school leaving or drop-outs, with students not completing their education. We know that learning loss is a real possibility that could cause us to squander significant gains as a country.”
The Minister said that absent physical classrooms should not limit their ability to deliver a syllabus and as such, this needs to be improved.
“We are aware that some parents, teachers and schools have engaged their children academically by various means. We roundly applaud and are deeply grateful for those efforts. We encourage all to continue doing this where possible from as early as possible and if you need help in doing that, let us know. Going forward, we know that no single approach will provide regular and effective learning opportunities for children across the region and across the grades. We will, therefore, have to use blended, multi-faceted learning approaches in the coming months.”
Until then, the Education Minister assured that all efforts will be made to ensure every student is academically engaged until the physical reopening of schools can be allowed. For now, the Learning Channel will actively work to assist these initiatives.
Classroom activity has been restricted since mid-March, when Guyana started witnessing an increase in positive cases. Since then, schools have only been opened to facilitate the National Grade Six Assessment and the Caribbean Examination Council’s assessments for secondary students.