Safety of pupils rests in hands of all stakeholders

The countdown is over. This morning thousands of masked Grade 7 and 12 pupils will troop back to school to meet their teachers in a familiar but new environment, their learning space webbed by a plethora of new regulations and protocols aimed at fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. In the “new normal”, in addition to masks, pupils will be expected to observe social distancing; sanitising hands and surfaces is compulsory; temperature screening will become routine; handwashing will have to be religiously enforced. Learning centres will become places where our children will not only strive for knowledge acquisition but also fight for survival.

Amid fumbling, glaring internal contradictions accompanied by apologies, basic education minister Angie Motshekga unconvincingly assured us last week that all would be order in terms of personal protective equipment (PPE) when pupils return to class on June 8. On Friday Eastern Cape education MEC Fundile Gade told us that most schools in the province are indeed ready to resume the academic programme. We hope they are both correct.

However, the challenges facing education institutions in our province are well documented. It remains a mystery as to how schools like Mcheni Primary School in Tsolo could suddenly have the infrastructure they need in place when barely a few months back pupils did not even have classrooms and had to conduct lessons in the open.

On Saturday we reported that some schools were yet to receive their PPE while others were on record that the delivered PPE was either substandard or inadequate. In others fumigation was still to be done and the revised curricula was yet to be delivered. Astonishingly, some schools indicated that no staff had been trained on how to comply with Covid-19 regulations. Two schools in King William’s Town announced over the weekend that they are closed till further notice as a staff member had been in contact with a Covid-19 patient. We wonder how many schools will be closed within a week of reopening.

While our children have a right to education, as we were reminded by Motshekga recently, they also have a right to life. This right, clearly, cannot be left to the government alone. We call on parents and all other stakeholders, including those who transport children to school, to work tirelessly to make sure these young people are kept safe.

They are the future of this beloved nation. If we don’t play our roles with extreme dedication and diligence, the danger is that schools may become hotbeds for cluster outbreaks of the virus in the province.

We wonder how many schools will be closed within a week of reopening due to cases of Covid-19 infection