Manickchand is prepared to shut down education system again If…..

Education Minister Priya Manickchand interacts with a Nursery School student as Schools in Guyana reopens for fact to face contact after more than fifteen months of being closed (EDUCATION MINISTRY PHOTO)

Some 10 nursery and primary schools across the country were not opened today Monday as teachers within those schools tested positive for COVID-19. That number is minimal though as Education Minister Priya Manickchand said there has been a good turn out to the reopening of schools.

“I’ve seen mostly filled classrooms and I say that, taking into consideration that desks and benches are distanced,” Minister Manickchand said this morning.

The minister said parents have an option to send their children to school or have them stay home and use materials provided by Ministry of Education, “there is no right or wrong in this pandemic, what parents choose to do is what we will support,” the Minister said.

The minister said her ministry is not “closed” to reassessing this decision on a daily basis as she said if they have to close the “whole education system down again and go home” that will be done.

“The fact that so many children have turned out and so many parents have choosen to send their children out, tell us that this is a right decision to make at this time.”

Two children making their way into school accompanied by an adult (Education Ministry Photo)

This morning, there were mixed reactions to return to schools. Tamacia, a mother of a student at Head Start Nursery in Alberttown said she was looking forward to the face to face classes for her child.

“It was just for orientation because she never had the experience of coming to school,” the mother said as she was preparing to take her child back home at 9 am, “it is very ticklish in the sense that, COVID is still on the rise and so on but then again, I am glad that she is being able to come to school.”

Different schools have enacted their own operational plans for the return of students to the classrooms. Some schools only did orientation today while some started with classes.

Over the next week days the schools are expected to start and complete a diagnostic assessment that will give them an ideas of the gaps in learning and adopting teaching methods to fill those gaps.