ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan government has said it will reopen schools and universities across the country from September 15, local media reported, after they were shuttered in March to help curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood chaired an inter-provincial meeting in Islamabad and announced the decision, saying schools and universities should call their administrative staff to duty before September 15 and hold drills to practice coronavirus standard operating procedures before students returned to the classrooms.
“It is my request to private schools especially that the SOPs that you follow be the ones made by the government,” Mahmood said.
Around 22.8 million of Pakistan’s 70 million children are out of school, according to UNICEF figures.
The government announced last month that it was finalizing various options on how to safely reopen schools, including that children attend on alternative days, the physical size of the classroom be expanded, and younger and older children come to school during different shifts in the day.
Mahmood requested has provincial governments to apprise the central government of the safety measures they wished to implement so that a federal-level policy could be made.
Early this week, on Tuesday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres launched the ‘Education in the time of COVID-19 and beyond Policy Brief,’ warning that the pandemic had created the most severe disruption in the world’s education systems in history and was threatening a loss of learning that could stretch beyond one generation of students.