School board proposes school reopening in mid-May
KUCHING: The Sarawak United Association of Chinese Primary School Boards of Management has proposed that the reopening of schools be postponed to mid-May while lauding the State Disaster Management Committee’s (SDMC) decision for schools in red zones across Sarawak to resume classes on Mar 15.
Its president Jonathan Chai said it would be ideal for schools to reopen two or so months later given that Health directorgeneral Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah had recently predicted that the number of Covid-19 positive cases in Malaysia would decrease to double digits by then.
More ideally, Chai said schools should reopen only when the pandemic situation in the country is under control or the majority of the population is vaccinated against the virus.
When contacted yesterday, he said he could not understand the Ministry of Education’s (MoE) rationale for its ‘one-sizefits-all’ decision that schools nationwide should reopen from Mar 1.
“When we encountered similar situation last year, schools were asked to close and the students asked to go online. Why is the sudden change of plan now when the enhanced version of online teaching was just introduced a couple of weeks earlier?”
Chai said they had expected that students would not be asked to go back to school at least for a while since the latest guidelines on online teaching has been introduced.
He feared that the MoE’s erratic decision might send wrong impression to the public that the pandemic situation in the country was under control.
He also cautioned that the community might have lackadaisical attitude towards observing all the standard operating procedures (SOP) put in place.
“To my knowledge, a penolong kanan of a Chinese primary school in Kuching was tested positive for Covid-19 just a few days ago while most of its senior staff are now quarantined because of close contact.
“We cannot imagine if the school were asked to resume classes next Monday,” he said.
According to Chai, most parents would be reluctant to send their children back to school at this stage.
“Teachers could no longer conduct online classes once the school session resumes, then we would be caught in a ‘neither here nor there’ situation and that would not be good for the students.”
He said they could only hope that schools, which were expected to reopen next week, would strictly comply with the SOP.
“We need to live with the new norms so long as the virus is still not contained,” he added.
In a statement on Friday, SDMC announced that schools in Covid-19 red zones in Sarawak would remain closed until Mar 14.
Nine districts in the state were then classified as red zones - Kuching, Samarahan, Julau, Meradong, Sibu, Kapit, Bintulu, Subis and Miri districts.
Education Minister Dr Mohd Radzi Md Jidin announced on Feb 19 that preschoolers, Year 1 and 2 pupils would return to school on Mar 1, Year 3 to 6 on Mar 8, secondary school students in Johor, Kelantan, Terengganu and Kedah on Apr 4 and the remaining states on Apr 5.