File photo showing an empty classroom in a school in Kuching. — Photo by Roystein Emmor
KUCHING (Apr 26): Schools located in Covid-19 high-risk areas in Sarawak should remain closed for another two weeks until the situation improves, said Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii.
He also urged the Ministry of Education to come up with specific and transparent parameters on whether or not schools could stay open in the event of an outbreak.
“Such parameters must be revealed transparently to the public to allay concerns and more importantly, allow parents to make an informed decision on what is best for their child,” Dr Yii said in a statement today.
This comes after a recent statement by federal Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Rina Mohd Harun who said that the federal government had their own strategies on addressing the emergence of clusters within educational institutions.
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Dr Yii asked that the government reveal their plans to prove that it was not ‘mere talk’, especially with the mushrooming of multiple education clusters around the country.
“It is important for the Ministry of Education not to work in silo anymore but together with all relevant ministries to come up with a comprehensive ‘education blueprint during a pandemic’ to balance the importance of health and education for our children,” he said.
He stressed that the decision to open schools must be purely based on public health data and decisions on having physical classes must be based on local health conditions and school-specific information and the government had to be transparent with such data.
“The government must be transparent with such data not just overall daily numbers, but also parameters such as Infective Rate (Rt) or Positive Rate to properly determine whether enough testing is done in that area on a district and sub-district level especially where those schools are located.”
Dr Yii proposed that schools could remain open only if the positive rate in a region stayed below five per cent as recommended by the World Health Organisation over a certain time period.
On whether or not to have physical classes, he said the factors to consider were the ability of schools to follow all the necessary standard operating procedures (SOPs), including taking into consideration the size of the student body, the ability to divide students into smaller cohorts and the physical condition of the school building.
“The ability of the health department officers and even hospitals to respond in case of an outbreak in the area should also be considered. If the current health system in that area is full, we must take extra precautions to prevent any outbreak in schools in the area.”
Furthermore, Dr Yii said the government should develop a comprehensive plan for remote learning that includes plans for full-time remote learning and hybrid approaches.
“The best way forward is a hybrid system that involves both in-person and virtual instruction where parents are given the choice to send their children to school, especially those that can’t follow the home-based learning including the poor, students with disabilities, slow-learners or even working parents that have no one to look after their children during working hours.”
A ‘rotational system’ can also be done where certain group of students come on alternate days which would help reducing number of students in school, he added.
The Bandar Kuching MP said the decision on whether to temporarily close schools should not continue to be based on the daily new Covid-19 infections as it was too disruptive to a student’s education and teacher’s lesson plans.
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