With opposition MPs calling for greater transparency in handling surging COVID-19 cases among teachers and students, Education Minister Priya Manickchand yesterday defended the reopening of schools for the new term and said that administrators have flexibility with seating and other arrangements to ensure safety.
Guyana has recorded over 2200 cases of the novel coronavirus in the past three days and concerns have mounted about the Ministry of Education’s decision to reopen schools for face-to-face learning and the mechanisms in place to protect students and teachers.
Opposition Member of Parliament and former Education Minister Dr Nicolette Henry yesterday accused the Education Ministry of being selective in its adoption of UNICEF’s framework for the reopening of schools.
“I have seen the Ministry of Education here speak about UNICEF’s call to have schools reopening. What I did not hear from the Ministry is how they plan to implement this same UNICEF’s guidance for safe and healthy journeys to school during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. This is a guidance document that was prepared by UNICEF in 2021 and provides key guidance to countries in terms of the reopening of schools,” the former Education Minister told a press conference yesterday.
During the press conference called by the Office of the Leader of the Opposi-tion to specifically deal with the spike in COVID-19 cases and the reopening of school, Henry said that they remain dissatisfied with the lack of preparedness and what appears to be a disorganized approach specifically to the reopening of schools. Henry along with former junior Public Health Minister Dr Karen Cummings and MP Ganesh Mahipaul rapped the Irfaan Ali-led PPP/C government for its management of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tearing into Education Minister Manickchand’s decision to open schools for face-to-face learning, Henry, who was Education Minister during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, argued that the decision should have been guided by science. She questioned the provisions in place to combat the transmission of the virus noting that Guyana’s education infrastructure does not support the requisite distancing guidelines.
Since schools have reopened, parents have taken to social media to complain of their dissatisfaction with the provisions in place while at the same time lauding the effort to reopen for face-to-face interaction. One parent even took her displeasure with seating arrangements to the Facebook page of Manickchand.
At right is the interaction with the parent and the Minister
Consistently inconsistent
When contacted, Manickchand told Stabroek News that the APNU+AFC Coalition’s position regarding the reopening of schools has been consistently inconsistent with that of international bodies. She said that it was Henry that closed schools in March 2020 when Guyana recorded its first case of the COVID virus without putting plans in place to continue education delivery.
“The PNC was always saying that we should not open back schools. If we had listened to them then when would our children have gone back to write CSEC, to do SBAs or to learn? We are following the advice of the international bodies and we are putting systems in place to facilitate safe learning. The APNU+AFC’s position has been wholly inconsistent with the position of international bodies,” Manickchand said while alluding to UNICEF’s ‘pandemic classroom’ which was featured during the United Nations General Assembly in 2021.
“All the studies in the world suggest that the kind of disadvantages that we have from not opening are more frightening than trying sensibly reopen school. So the PNC’s position is not new with these numbers. The PNC’s position has been consistent from the beginning of March 2020. They closed school, did nothing to try to engage anybody and from the time that we reopened school, they said that something was wrong with it,” she added.
In relation to the seating arrangements and other management plans, Manickchand explained that it is solely dependent on the schools to come up with individual plans based on the broader plan put forward by the Ministry.
“That is why we put out broad guidelines and try not to tell a school what to do. If a school was made for 75 children, the hinterland, and only 30 are in school chances are that everybody, everyday can come out. If however, a school was made for 30 children and the school’s population is 940 then everybody from every grade cannot come out. They need to go to tier two, tier two is the exam grades must come out every day and then you rotate the other grades,” the Minister explained.
In December, the MoE announced that full-time face-to-face learning would resume for some academic levels. Manickchand had said that students were given sufficient time to get vaccinated. Further, she said that the students cannot remain at home any longer due to the learning loss incurred. Manickchand said that the schools would be reopened with the necessary facilities to achieve a safe return.
According to the schedule, pupils at the nursery level will attend face-to-face learning as of January 3, and sessions will be for four hours each day. The schools will use a rotation system. At the primary level, pupils will have online and face-to-face classes which will see them attending physical classes on a rotation schedule. At the secondary level, students of Grade Seven will have face-to-face and online classes. When attending face-to-face classes the students will use a rotation system. The Grades Eight to Twelve classes will have face-to-face only classes. These students will have classes every day.
Additionally, Henry said that it is important that all stakeholders be engaged when making decisions about the education sector. Expounding on the UNICEF framework, she said “I also noticed that UNICEF touched on ensuring that physical distancing, distancing is encouraged and put in place during school sessions and that will require some amount of infrastructural work here in Guyana given that our classroom sizes are where they are and the number of students per classroom as you know, does not allow for that particular protocol to be implemented.”
Henry told the press conference that the government has not been forthcoming with the information relating to the management of the pandemic and the education sector. The former minister said she wrote Manickchand on matters of national importance, particularly relating to the education sector, but never got an acknowledgement of her mail. She added that they are now forced to ask these questions in the media since the Parliamentary process for questioning the government has also been failing them.
“What we have not seen, or we haven’t heard in any particular detail, or even just to give us the framework as to how these measures are to be implemented and so it does raise a red flag…I’ve also seen on the Ministry of Education’s Facebook page that in keeping with the UNICEF call they decided to reopen schools and so in my presentation a few minutes ago, I spoke about what appears to be a cherry-picking exercise.
“Yes, UNICEF would have indicated that it would be in the best interest in order to reduce learning loss our schools reopened but they did not stop there. They also pointed out that in order for schools to be safe, there are certain measures that must be put in place which as far as I’m aware, they have not been put in place and so I think that there is where we have to disconnect. There is where our concern, particularly at the level of the Coalition lies, and I and I don’t think that anybody who’s technically competent, would advise the Minister of Education to reopen school and not to put those measures in place,” Henry commented.
However, in a Facebook post Manickchand said that Henry wrote to the principal of the Bishops’ High School complaining about the delivery of the Health and Family Life Education (HFLE) curriculum.
Mishandling and mismanagement
Former Public Health Minister Dr Cummings stuck to her party’s narrative that the current government is mishandling and mismanaging the pandemic which has resulted in drastic increases in deaths and positive cases.
“One death of a Guyanese is one death too many. There have been close to 500 new cases within the last 24 hours while the flagship hospital in Guyana, the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation continues the battle an outbreak of COVID-19 among the staff. Guyana can ill afford to have the junior doctors who are our future health care leaders be stricken by this virus,” Cummings lamented.
She chided Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony for the lack of interest in mapping the various variants in Guyana pointing to the fact that confirmation of the Delta variant came long before it was present in the country. She added that the speculation attached to whether the Omicron variant is in Guyana should be quelled by the government testing for these strains.
“There are questions that need answers by the populace such as the ability of the government to attain herd immunity, would Guyana be able to (fully) vaccinate 70% of the population anytime soon. And what has been the Ministry of Health’s approach to people with co-morbidities,” she questioned.
She added that frontline workers are now at risk and Guyana does not even have confirmation of which strain of COVID-19 it is dealing with and the areas of virus concentration. The former Health Minister added that government should be more proactive in its plan to tackle the virus.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Dr Anthony had said that the government is awaiting gene sequencing results to determine which variant is present in Guyana. He had also explained that Delta is still the dominant variant in Guyana with Omicron set to take over owing to its high transmissibility potential.
