Memo to Education minister: We should reopen schools next year

The Ministry of Education seems to be in a state of there-there on the matter of reopening institutions of learning. It is not reassuring to Ugandans at all.

Now, I bring a clear-cut policy suggestion on the table: Let us reopen schools in January 2022. 

Otherwise given the trend things are taking, we may end up with a situation like that of June this year when schools opened and closed the same day.

The socio-economic and psycho-social impact this disease has had on the people is unquantifiable; the loss of lives being more unquantifiable socio-economically and psycho-socially. 

So, if the government cannot project the possible loss of lives in what we have been told could be the third wave of the Covid-19 attack, it is my unsolicited advice that we postpone the reopening of schools to next year.

For (the reverence of) the gods, this year has only three months to go (if one were to discount the ‘non-month’ of December). If the re-opening of schools is postponed, the country can then embark on a vaccination campaign as it waits out the year 2021 to go.

The vaccination campaign should target over 80 percent of the total population to be vaccinated in remainder of three months of 2021.

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Aisha Asuman was going to begin term one of Senior Six on June 7. Shakila Asuman was going to write her final Law School exam at IUIU in Mbale on Monday June 7. But on June 6, Mr Museveni announced the closure of all education institutions and slapped a near-total lockdown on the country.

And of course, as would be expected, people were angry with him. However, it was later to be learnt that Mr Museveni’s announcement was timely and a very much-needed intervention. Otherwise things were getting out of hand.

The Education institutions had in a very short span of time become centres of morbidity and super spreaders. We are familiar with some secondary schools whose management decided to keep mum about the worrying numbers in their sick bays.

Aisha Asuman never stepped on the premises of her school. She was still at her uncle’s home in Kawempe when Mr Museveni threw the spanner in the works: No schooling. Let me talk as non-Ugandan: how shall Aisha Asuman recover the kamoney she deposited on the school’s bank account?

There are many losses the people have incurred that may not be recovered. And one such loss is the loss of a whole year of learning. By the way, such a loss of education time has happened before.

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By mid 1965, the Rwenzururu Rebellion had led to a near-shut down of schools and health facilities in what was later to be the districts of Bundibugyo and Kasese.

Our family fled to Intendero (and later Bunyaruguru) in Ankole Kingdom. The family of a highly placed personality from Kasese fled to Mitoma (in Ankole Kingdom). And I know of another respected personality whose family ‘braved’ the war (with the attendant risks associated with war).

The child whose family fled to Mitooma continued studying while the child whose family remained in the war zone stopped studying. But the year the child of the ‘Mitooma refuge’ was supposed to sit his P6 exams (PLE as done in P6), there was a change in the school system. Arithmetic became Mathematics and Junior School became Senior School.

The Mitooma Refuge child lost a year and his friend skipped a year as both sat their P7 (New PLE Year) in the same year. What is my point? These things happen. Let us just re-open schools in January next year. 

Mr Bisiika is the executive editor of the East African Flagpost. [email protected]