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Reopening Schools For KG, Primary Students Safe Than Being At Home – Child Rights International

Education Reopening Schools For KG, Primary Students Safe Than Being At Home – Child Rights International
SEP 7, 2020 LISTEN

Child Rights International has called for the immediate reopening of schools.

According to the NGO, the partial reopening of schools for Junior High School (JHS) and Senior High School final year students has proven that it will be safer for students to be in school than stay at home.

The Director of Child Rights International, Bright Appiah argued in an interview with Citi News that scientific data indicates that the presence of children in school will not pose a threat.

“The analysis we have done so far shows that the school system will be safer for children than they being at home looking at the data of students who are allowed to go to school at the SHS level and Junior High level. If you pick the data for the SHS, over 270,000 plus students were in school and out of that we had less than 600 people getting COVID.

“It means that with clear management and observation of the protocol, children can go to school and not be affected by the condition of the virus. Then again children are among the classes that show a low transmission of COVID. Their presence will not pose a threat to anyone.”

All nursery, kindergarten, primary, Junior High School (JHS) 1 and Senior High School (SHS) 1 students have had the rest of their 2019/2020 academic year postponed till January 2021.

This was announced by President Nana Akufo-Addo on Sunday, August 31, 2020 during his 16th COVID-19 update to Ghanaians.

He said, per consultations with the Ghana Education Service (GES), the resumption of the next academic year in January 2021 will be made “with appropriate adjustments to the curriculum to ensure that nothing is lost from the previous year.”

“The Ghana Education Service, after further consultations, has decided to postpone the remainder of the academic year for all nursery, kindergarten, primary, JHS 1 and SHS 1 students.”, Nana Addo disclosed.

Schools in the country were shut down in March 2020 after Ghana recorded its first two cases of Coronavirus infection.

Final year students were later allowed to return to schools to enable them to sit for their exit exams; the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) for JHS students and the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for SHS students.

After five months of closure, however, many have called on the government to reopen the schools to make up for lost academic contact hours.

In furtherance, the President also assured the “relevant dispositions will also be made so that the presence, at the same time, in the school of all streams of students, can occur in safety.”

— citinewsroom

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