Ideally, the return to physical classrooms by the 19,344 students who are due to write the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) exam on August 20 should have served as a template for the full reopening of schools after almost five months of shutdown.
However, an unfortunate spike in COVID-19 cases within days of the July 20 resumption of classes has added an element of uncertainty to those plans.
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley’s announcement yesterday of the shutdown of SEA preparations classes was made less than a month before the proposed September 1 start of the new school year. The SEA exam will still go ahead but almost everything else in the education sector is now up in the air.
It certainly doesn’t help that SEA students were among the latest to test positive for COVID-19. Some parents are now fearful about sending their children back to school and there is a firm stance by the T&T Unified Teachers’ Association (TTUTA) about safeguarding the health and wellbeing of their members and students.
That means from day one, the next Minister of Education will be taking on a weighty portfolio, with many pros and cons to be considered both for resuming classes or keeping schools closed.
Opening schools safely isn’t just about the adjustments that will have to be made in classrooms but also how much of the coronavirus is circulating in the country, which affects the likelihood that students and staff will take COVID-19 into their classrooms.
It is inevitable changes will have to be made to schools’ daily routines but even that will depend on whether infection rates are low and public health personnel are standing by to identify and isolate cases and close contacts.
Among the options that can be considered for the return to school in the new normal are shift systems, with some students attending classes in the morning and others in the afternoon. Ideally, there should be only a small group of students together in a well-ventilated room.
In other parts of the world where children have returned to school, there have been reductions of class size, increased physical distancing between students and limited interaction between classes to reduce potential for wide-scale transmission within schools.
Children rarely develop severe symptoms of COVID-19 but there is a greater risk to teachers, family members and the wider community.
But there is also considerable risk in keeping schools closed, according to the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States. This has to do with the social, emotional and behavioural health, economic well-being and academic achievement of children in the short- and long-term. Also, for students with learning disabilities, online learning makes absorbing information more difficult.
With so much to be considered, it is imperative that the new government quickly facilitate dialogue between the next Education Minister and the key stakeholders such as TTUTA and the NPTA.
A new normal will have to be found in education sooner rather than later.