Ministry of
education had an important meeting on 15th June, 2020 regarding the
school reopening updates during coronavirus pandemic school lockdown. Federal
Minister of education Shafqat Mehmood chaired the meeting. According to
reports, the members discussed the “model SOPs “for schools to reopen from
mid-July.
MODEL SOPs
“Model SOP” school reopen program will be
implemented in Federal Capital Islamabad in first phase and after observing the
results, the model SOP program will extend to all cities. Anyhow the meeting
members agreed to observe the pandemic situation on daily basis and agreed that
the situation to open the schools right now is not fair.
PRIVATE SCHOOL NOTICES PARENTS ABOUT REOPENING OF SCHOOLS FROM 15TH JULY, 2020
After the
meeting of Education minister, many schools have sent messages and notices to teachers
regarding the reopening of schools from 15th July. Private schools
are assuring the parents regarding the safety and sanitizing measures if schools
reopen from July, 15. Private school association is continuously bumping the
government to let them open the schools under prescribed SOPs.
PRIVATE SCHOOL ASSOCIATION, KASHIF MIRZA
According to
private school association head, Kashif Mirza, who was talking to SAMAA TV
morning show, on 17th June, that 99% of school are closed because of
not collecting fees for more than three months as government forcefully closed
all administrative office of small private schools while lockdown which cut the
connection of school and parents. Only 1% of schools, who take fees through
banks could collect money and are giving classes online. A large number of students don’t have access
to laptops, internet and online classes drama and no one talk about that 99% students.
Government’s Taleemghar program is just another failed program which is not facilitating
the students at home,” Kashif Mirza stressed his points.
‘It’s a great
educational loss of students to keep them out of school for long in a country,
where already 2.5 crore children are out of school. He stressed to reopen the
schools from mid-July under proper SOPs,’ he continued.
SCHOOLS WILL NOT SEE STUDENTS
On the other side,
parents have strongly rejected any possibility of sending their children to
schools in such high risk time after getting the notices. 'It's insane to send these notices when corona cases are rising day by day. It's a trick of schools to collect fees from parents,' many parents responded.
The rising
corona cases, revised smart lockdown in big cities of Pakistan along with
severe hot weather elucidates that the possibility of school reopening from 15th
July is very low, but still government is observing and deciding on daily
situation of pandemic in country.