Pupil tests positive for Covid-19

JEMIMA BEUKES

WINDHOEK

Calm has been urged after a Mariental Secondary School pupil tested positive for Covid-19. Classes have been suspended and hostel boarders will be kept in quarantine until 6 July.

All classrooms will be disinfected and high-risk contact cases will also be quarantined. All staff, parents and learners have been urged to be cautious of flu-like symptoms and report this to the Covid-19 screening centre at the town.

The education ministry also announced yesterday that parents are allowed to keep their children at home, while the promotion requirement for Grades 1 to 9 has been lowered from 40% to 35%.

It has also been announced that there will be no end-of-term tests and end-of-year examinations for the primary phase and that continuous assessment marks will be used to promote grades 8 and 9.

Grade 9, on the other hand, will write an end-of-year examination.

The executive director of the ministry of education, arts and culture, Sanet Steenkamp, said this is applicable to all private and state schools.

According to her the curriculum intends to provide the standard for learning progression without repetition during these years of schooling and a child can only fail if such child fail to attain the grade level expectations as determined during consultation with the class teacher and promotion committee.

Steenkamp also stated that an academic recovery plan should be implemented by every school in order to make up for lost time due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Learners who do not progress to the next grade must receive counselling to help them understand their situation and must receive learning support focusing on the competencies which they did not achieve,” she said.

Home schooling

Steenkamp said the ministry was working on a home-schooling guide that would be issued soon.

“In the event a partner or guardian would prefer not to send their child or children to school during the Covid-19 pandemic due to concerns for their health and wellbeing they may do so, but provided they continue engaging with the school and teachers to ensure the learner does not fail behind,” Steenkamp said.

She added that workbooks and assessment activities need to be made available by the teachers and the parent must oversee the continuation of learning as well as submitting the completed assignments and assessment activities.

Strict measures

Steenkamp said physical distancing was one of the challenges facing schools, as a number of measures must be adhered to for the safety of learners.

All schools are expected to comply with the World Health Organisation (WHO) health protocols.

These include platooning, with one half of a class attending classes in the mornings and the other half in the afternoon, or shorter sessions during normal school hours.

“Schools that do not meet these standards will not be allowed to operate in a face-to-face mode and these schools will have to continue to implement strategies and to put all measures in places such that the school could re-open as soon as possible,” she said.

Steenkamp said some schools were still working on ensuring access to water and toilets, but some of these may be medium- and long-term interventions.

“Some schools will still have to ferry water to the schools which will be stored in five-litre tanks. Currently education minister Anna Nghipondoka is on a high-level visit to the regions to assess the water provision and ablution facilities,” she said.