Re-opening Schools- A thread

On March 13th 2020, Kenya announced its first case of COVID 19. On 15th March 2020, the government closed all institutions of learning. At the time, there were only 3 confirmed COVID 19 cases in Kenya.

That decision was widely criticised as premature, hurried and wholly unnecessary. At the time, it was still widely believed that black skin was a protection against COVID, and that this thing would go away as quickly as it had come.

Meanwhile, on 16th March, a regular Kenyan family welcomed their kin back home from Eswatini. The gentleman had transited through O.R. Tambo in Jo'burg. Over time, their family member got sickly and was admitted to hospital.

The gentleman in question passed on the 26th of March.His was the first reported death of a person infected with the corona virus in Kenya.

This man's story is relevant because he lived with school going children and the truth of the matter is that if those children had interacted with their 600 school mates and teachers, we would be dealing with a crisis of Biblical proportions.

GOK was right to close learning institutions

There is no debate on school closure or why schools may have to remain closed for a long time to come. Case in point, Olympic Primary has 5000 students and no extra land. Even with a shift system there is no way to ensure social distancing.

Our schools have no water, ablution facilities are few..the situation is dire. The majority of private schools are the informal/APBET type. They are found in informal areas and they mirror the situation in our public schools.

If we enforce social distancing strictly, it would mean splitting of classes, eg a class of one hundred would be split into 5, meaning there would be need for more classes and a need for more teachers.

Case in point, Maranda High School has a candidate class (form 4 class) of about 750 students. If we say each class should have 20 students, they would need 38 classes just for the Form 4 class. I will not go into dormitories and sleeping spaces.

Before COVID, we had a national teacher shortage of a little over 100,000. At this point,the government can only hire 40,000 more teachers for both primary and secondary.

Even a shift or semester system would be difficult to implement in schools with such high numbers, without serious infrastructure and human resource investment.

That said, there are some public schools and some private schools which have the capacity to enforce social distancing and other mitigation measures fully with all their students present; but we are all learning an expensive lesson; that we are bound to the same fate.

Sounds dire but all is not lost. See, there is a difference between re-opening schools and re-opening learning...and our focus must shift to re-opening learning

There are also ways to mitigate the issue of transition..no child needs to repeat and pay the ultimate price for a pandemic they did not cause.

In this country children do not transit to the next grade or to high school through an exam; we transit by age. The purpose of KCPE is placement into a secondary school.

Why should we lose a whole transition year when we have teachers capable of reorganising the syllabus? Teachers who have been doing this since the advent of formal education?

Remaining closed does not have to be the death of progression to the next class or grade. To prevent progression in the name of COVID will mean the death of public schools. Recovery will take upwards of 15 years. So this week I will try and break it down as much as I can.

PS: Even without re-opening, schools can continue to be safe spaces for the children that need them.

End of thread