Pakistan to reopen schools in September if COVID-19 situation improves

Islamabad: Pakistan’s government is working to get students back to the classrooms and reopen schools, colleges and universities across the country from September 15 if the coronavirus situation improves.

Students will be able to begin the new academic year by mid-September if the “health indicators improve over the weeks”, Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood announced on Thursday. The government will review its decision in the first and third week of August before the formal authorization to open schools.

Guidelines or standard operating procedures (SOPs) announced by the government must be ensured before the opening of educational institutions, he said. There is an ongoing discussion about several options including an ‘odd-even plan’ to allow only half of the students on campus on a given day. He warned that any academic institution found violating SOPs would be immediately shut.

Universities may allow PhD students who “need access to laboratories to continue their research” by late July, the minister suggested, urging the institutions to ensure health checks.

As several schools and colleges shifted to online learning due to the closures during the pandemic, the students in remote areas with no or poor access to the internet suffered the most. To compensate for the loss, “those students would be allowed to come to the hostel” but the residence rate should not exceed 30 per cent, Mahmood insisted.

Educational institutes will be allowed to call in faculty and administrative staff before September for the training of staff and implementation of health guidelines issued by the government before welcoming students. The federal ministry will devise the SOPs but provincial governments may alter as per the situation in their respective provinces.

The education minister’s announcement comes a day after a virtual conference by education ministers of all provinces to decide the reopening of schools provided the approval from the Ministry of National Health Services and National Command and Operation Center (NCOC).

Educators have welcomed the government’s decision and are willing to work on guaranteeing essential health checks.

“This is great news for schools and universities who besides the students are also suffering severe financial crunch due to the closure since March,” remarked Dr Rabia Akhtar, director of School of Integrated Social Sciences at the University of Lahore. “The institutions are ready to welcome students back to the campus for the fall semester with proper SOPs” she said, suggesting “educational institutes should adopt a hybrid model of physical and virtual learning” put in place during the quarantine. “We need to understand that COVID is here to stay and we need to devise our academic and non-academic strategies to deal with this reality. We cannot remain in quarantine mode for the rest of the year or years to come. It is time Pakistan’s schools and universities devise a strategy to deal and live with it” she told Gulf News.