Which way for stressed schools in light of the proposed reopening?

For months, government has been deliberating on the reopening of schools. Last week, the Ministry of Education released a draft strategy for Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) implementation that laid out guidelines for schools to follow in the event of reopening. This comes six months after they were closed due to fears that they would aid the spread of the coronavirus.

The document lists the now familiar SOPs such a compulsory wearing of masks, hand-washing, social distancing, temperature screening at each entrance and exit, and so on.
While many of these SOPs can be achieved, a few of them pose brand new problems in a school environment. The question that remains is, are schools safe to open? Are teachers, parents and learners ready for the reopening?

Congestion problems
Wilson Kabarebe, a veteran primary school headmaster and a private school owner from Buyanja, Rukungiri District says that from what he read in the draft strategy document, schools are not ready to open. So much preparation needs to be done in so little time.

He says: “There is already too much congestion in primary schools (government ones especially) and the social distancing issue is going to cause too many challenges. Most schools have had problems of space for years. How will they successfully accommodate children in social distancing arrangement? There is no time or money to build new structures.”

Aggrey Kimera, the headteacher Kingsway Primary School in Lweza, a private school near Kampala says that the school is already preparing for reopening since the SOPs came out less than two weeks ago. The school is already erecting foot-operated handwashing points, on top of other logistical and technical preparations.
Kimera however says that he sees several challenges with some of the SOPs.

Social distancing
He says: “Social distancing of four meters between each learner is going to be challenging. It means that we need more rooms. While this school has enough spare space, I can’t say the same for most schools. Some government funding for temporary structures like tents and the like, is needed.”

Kimera says that social distancing calls for the hiring of more teachers to handle all these learners in different rooms that would ordinarily be in the same room. “It gets worse in the dormitories for the boarding section,” he adds.

“For us to ditch double-decker beds, triple-decker beds and even quadruple-decker beds and opt for single beds that are properly distanced as per the guidelines is going to be extremely hard to do for most schools.”

Candidate classes
The proposal developed by the department of Education Planning and Policy Analysis (EPPA) of the ministry of education also noted that there is the option of reopening for only candidate classes while the rest of learners stay home. That too poses problems for schools on one hand, and students on the other.

Veteran headmaster Wilson Kabareebe says: “The government suggestion that only candidate classes should be allowed to return to school for now indirectly means that the rest of the classes repeat next year. That too has its problems. It would mean that there is no P7, S4 and S6 next year, and there would be two versions of Senior One students and Senior Five students. It is too messy.”

Bernaddette Nayebare, a Senior Three student at St. Kizito Secondary School, in Rubaga Division, Kampala has concerns about letting only the candidate classes go back to school, leaving the rest of tat home.

“I think the only way for my school to reopen is to let only the candidate classes study. There is not enough room for all of us to fit comfortably in the available space as per the social distancing guidelines. Unfortunately, it also means that the rest of us must repeat our classes next year. I think that is not fair,” she says.

National exams
There also concerns about what is going to happen with the candidate classes and their national exams.
Kimera says: “We have been doing online teaching to prepare the learners for their PLE (Primary Leaving Examinations) but only about 70 percent of our learners have been able to attend them. Online learning has its problems. I can’t say we were very successful. Class control is completely difficult. So since not everyone participated, and because most of those who attended were not fully attentive, we would have to redo the classes to bring everyone to the same page.”
“If we are to do the national exams, it’s too late for this year. It requires that we teach up to December, break for two weeks, come back January for third term, teach for about two months and do exams in March,” he suggests.

Day or Boarding
One other problematic SOP that the ministry suggested is the requirement that schools should reopen either the boarding section or the day section but not both. It is easy to see the rationale.

Kingsway Primary run a day and boarding primary school. The headteacher Kimera says, “We have two independent schools; primary and nursery. We would have to make one boarding and another day, so that the pupils from the two sections never meet. However, I can’t say the same for many other schools like this.”

Kimera is worried that this arrangement requires a lot of logistics to make things happen at a time when schools have no cash owing to the closure which has lasted for the greater part of this year.

“This arrangement requires us to hire more teachers and other members of staff because classes that would ordinarily be in the same room will now be in separate ‘rooms’. For the upper classes, it is easier to convince parents to send their day-schooling child to boarding, but this is not the case for younger children in lower classes.”

Schools may be forced to choose to be fully day or fully boarding facilities. Schools and authorities alike recognise that day scholars pose a big risk. This is because some family members work in congested places where they run the risk of catching the virus.

The proposed reopening of schools calls for careful planning especially since it comes amid extreme financial strain owing to the closure of educational institutions which has lasted nearly six months.

Proposals
Day schools are not equipped to have students that stay full time. Similarly, many boarding schools are not built to have boarding sections where children sleep on single beds. It requires many times more space, which is not available.
To implement the proposed standard operating procedures successfully would call for all schools to become boarding facilities. This seems to be the only sure way to make them safe. However, due to financial constraints, that conversion is not an easy road to take.

Wilson Kabareebe, a veteran primary school headmaster and a private school owner says: “I would suggest two solutions that could actually work: a dead year for everyone up to February (2021). The other option is to employ a vaccine and also improving our health facilities. If this disease has come to stay, we must learn to live with it the same way we lived with HIV.”