But with a new sub variant recently discovered, is the Ministry prepared for full return back to school? CEO Maheia explained that they've learnt from the past two-plus years of the pandemic and they're ready - while still being cautious.
Dian Maheia, CEO, Ministry of Education
"The reality is as you say its not gone away and its not going away. We absolutely have every reason to expect that we are going to have new variants coming, we have 2 years of experience now, so within the schools we've learnt accommodations, we've learnt how to adjust, how to accommodate. Our students and teachers have learnt how to live within the confines of the protocols, so the mask wearing for example is no longer the issue that we once feared it would be, so we really are confident moving forward that bearing in mind - we keep in place our 3-Ws, wash your hands, wear your mask, watch your distance. That doesn't go away and combined with the protocols what we are also are confident about is that we've been working with accommodations, we've provided options so students and teachers have learnt how to accommodate their teaching. Everyone now understands how to do hybrid teaching, you're more familiar with distance learning methods with just varying between face to face and whatever form of distance learning is available to you. I think a project like Connect-ED is only going to support returning to school fully in a covid pandemic world, because within the classrooms there's going to be better internet access now and so we can expect reasonably that our teachers and students are better able to accommodate hybrid practices."
