Hasty closure of schools will hurt education: Shafqat

Ag APP

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Minister for Education, Shafqat Mahmood, has said the decision to reopen schools was taken with great care and any “hasty decision” to close them would “destroy education”, a day after Sindh announced it is delaying the return of secondary pupils by a week over virus fears.

In a series of tweets on Saturday, Mahmood said the health of students is “our first priority” and any decision the government makes will be guided by the advice of the health ministry. He added that the six-month closure “deeply affected the students” and the decision to reopen was “taken with great care”. “Any hasty decision to close will destroy education,” he wrote.

In a following tweet, the federal minister said 90 per cent of public sector and low-fee paying private schools do not have online teaching facilities, the closure of which results in most students not getting any education “at all”. “Learning loss is immense and can take years to recover,” he added. “While health is a priority, this factor must be kept in mind.”

A day earlier, Sindh education minister Saeed Ghani announcement the provincial government was putting off the reopening of secondary schools by a week. The schools were supposed to reopen on September 21. Mahmood responded to the move by saying stating the federal government will proceed with the reopenings as planned.

This comes as the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department revealed that the coronavirus had been confirmed in six more teachers in the province, taking the number of cases in the province’s educational institutions to 19. Infections have been reported in eight more schools in KP—four government and four private.

About 854 people have tested negative; 368 test results are yet to come; the proportion of corona cases in schools is per cent as 4,470 samples have been taken since September 15 after reopening of schools.

Pakistan recorded 645 new coronavirus cases in the 24 hours leading to Saturday. Seven patients died in hospitals in the same period, the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) said.