The Ministry of Education is hoping to reopen all 600-plus schools for hybrid learning by August 2022.
This is a journey that started early this year, with the reopening of some schools back in April, and then again in October. And while schools were understandably hesitant at first, 85 of them are now engaged in hybrid learning.
But there's still hundreds of schools left, so how is the ministry going to accomplish this? Well, they're starting by requiring all schools to apply for the green lighting process by next month, regardless of if the school is actually ready to reopen. According to Minister Francis Fonseca, this will allow the ministry to know where each school stands and to be able to work with them before the new school year in August. He told us more today via Zoom.
Hon. Francis Fonseca - Minister of Education
"As of November 25th, the last report I received, we have I think 182 have applied for reopening, for a green light, we've approved 170 of those schools and 85 of them have actually opened for some form of hybrid learning meaning that they also have remote learning taking place but on certain days of the week their students are reporting to campus. What I discussed on Cabinet on Tuesday was really to have all schools apply, we still have not, like I said, we've only received 182 applications for reopening for hybrid learning, so we are requiring that come January that all schools apply so we can know really what are the challenges you are facing that are keeping you from returning to classrooms and we can address them with those schools. We want schools to apply for the green light status, we want them to demonstrate that they have complied with our guidelines for school operations, of course they must continue to reinforce the COVID protocols that are in place and they have a reporting form, we have a reporting for, that allow them to report immediately, any incidences, any cases of COVID that arrives, whether it's with staff, with teachers, with students and that information goes directly to both the ministry of education and the ministry of health so that we can respond very quickly. All the evidence shows that transmission at school is very very low in terms of the cases that we've seen so far over the past few months, for those schools that have returned to face to face instruction, it's below 2% of students who have gotten any cases of COVID and in most cases when the ministry of health does their survey of what has caused that, it is linked to something outside the school environment, not related to the school environment. Schools are very safe but obviously we have to continue to educate the public bout that issue, educate parents about that issue, and we have to put in place everything to ensure whatever challenges school have, whatever weaknesses exist that is preventing them from face to face that we address those challenges."
