The Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition (GNECC) is asking the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health to assign health personnel to all schools to provide medical support upon the resumption of schools.
The Interim Chair of GNECC, Joseph Atsu Homadzi in a Citi News interview said the presence of health workers at the schools will ensure that suspected cases of COVID-19, should there be any, will be handled professionally.
“We call on the Ministry of Education to collaborate with the Ministry of Health to provide nurses around so that they will be monitoring the children so that should it happen that any child should fall a victim to this virus, they can quickly ensure that the child gets medical attention,” he said.
He further urged the government to continue with its e-learning program so that students of lower levels who are still home will still be engaged in learning.
“We encourage the government that the other children are in the house, so the Ministry of Education should continue with the e-learning program going on so that those children in the house can also benefit from education,” Joseph Atsu Homadzi added.
They should be mindful about children with disabilities so that they can also benefit from these measures
The proposal comes after the president, Nana Akufo-Addo on May 31, 2020, announced the reopening of schools for final year students as part of the first phase of easing of COVID-19 restrictions.
“From Monday, 15th June, 2020, the decision has been taken, after engagement with the Teacher Unions, whose co-operation I salute, to re-open schools and universities to allow for final-year junior high, senior high and university students to resume classes ahead of the conduct of their respective exit examinations. Indeed, final year university students are to report to their universities on 15th June; final year senior high school (SHS 3) students, together with SHS 2 Gold Track students, on 22nd June; and final-year junior high school (JHS 3) students on 29th June. JHS 3 classes will comprise a maximum of thirty (30) students; SHS classes a maximum of twenty-five (25) students, and University lectures will take place with half the class sizes,” the president said.
The decision to reopen schools amidst the rising confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the country was not without a major national debate on the subject with various stakeholder associations expressing divergent views on the matter.
GNECC, in contributing to the subject have also called for all teachers and students to undergo mandatory testing before going back to school to ensure that risk of infection in schools are minimized.
