Federal Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood addressed on Friday a press conference on the reopening of schools after a high-level meeting at the National Command and Operations Centre to review the decision to reopen educational institutions amid a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
Here’s what was decided in the NCOC meeting:
- Classes will start for students of grades nine to 12 students from January 18 as decided earlier. Exams are due for these students.
- Federal and provincial governments have decided that students will not be passed without exams this year like they were last year.
- One-week extension granted for start of classes for students of grades 1-8. They were earlier supposed to start by January 25.
- Primary schools will reopen from February 1.
- Higher education institutes still to reopen by February 1 as decided earlier.
- NCOC will re-evaluate data in a week and decide whether primary schools and higher education institutes opening on February 1 in cities where infections rates are high is appropriate or not as infection rate differ between cities.
- It is possible that if infection rate is high in a particular city, educational institutes may not reopen there.
Latest statistics show that the positivity ratio has gone down to 6.10%, but it is still high, the rate of critical patients is still as high as it was in November and so is the infection rate, he said.
“One thing is clear: all those associated with education in. politics or the government realise that learning levels of children has been severely affected because of the closure of schools,” Mehmood said.
But health is important too, the education minister said, emphasising that the need of the hour is to keep a balance between continuing education and minimising the risk to students.
