The government is reportedly considering scrapping this year’s second term and ordering that when schools open, primary and secondary school pupils will learn continuously until they close in December.
The Sunday News reports that the government has ordered schools to start preparing for the reopening.
A team of senior officials from both the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education and Health and Child Care was last week on the ground to assess the preparedness for school opening.
Anonymous sources told The Sunday News that the ministry has already agreed that it was impossible to run two more terms this year. Last year, the Government was also forced to cancel term two after a long layoff due to lockdowns.
Meanwhile, the Director of Information and Advocacy in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Mr Taungana Ndoro said he was not at liberty to speak on the matter. He told The Sunday News:
As a ministry, all I can say is that we are ready for opening and we are just waiting for the President to announce the opening dates. I can’t comment on the issue of second term because it is up to the President but it’s true that from our initial calendar most of the days of second term have been eaten away by the lockdown.
Mr Ndoro said the reopening of schools will be determined by a number of factors including the COVID-19 trends adding that most schools they visited last week showed that they were ready to start face-to-face lessons.
This year, schools opened for face-to-face learning on 15 March and closed for holidays on 4 June for the first term.
They were supposed to open for the second term on 28 June and close on 10 September, while the third term was supposed to start on 4 October and end on 17 December.
However, schools have failed to open for the second term due to the rise in Covid-19 cases which prompted the Government to impose a Level Four Lockdown which will be reviewed next after 24 August.
Meanwhile, data from the Ministry of Health and Child Care shows that the Coronavirus curve has been flattening lately.
More: The Sunday News