Mental health challenge for re-opening school

COVID-19 is not going away

On March 20, President Yoweri Museveni abruptly cut short the 2020 academic year following the reporting of the first COVID-19 case in the country. Suddenly, 15 million learners and over 500,000 teachers found themselves redundant.

Initially, President Museveni said schools would close for at least one month to avoid schools becoming hubs for spreading the coronavirus but he ended up postponing the learners’ return to school indefinitely.

But on Sept. 24, Janet Museveni, the Minister of Education and Sports said there would be no “dead year,” as her ministry announced the resumption of school for 1.2 million learners who are in their final year of school. She said having a dead year would clog the system.

The Ugandan education system follows a 7-4-2-3 pattern; seven years of primary school, followed by four years of lower secondary (O-Level), two years of Advanced Level and a further three to five years of tertiary education.

Every academic year, the cycle is completed with promotions into the next class, from primary school up to the university level. Going forward, as the learners in the candidate classes prepare for their final examinations, the other 14 million students will continue learning from home.

Janet Museveni said the government would re-open schools in a phased manner. So, the main focus for now, is sitting the national examinations which have been rescheduled for March and April. The Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) and Primary Leaving Exams (PLE) are set for March, next year, while the Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) is set for April, 2021.

The minister said the enhanced home schooling scheme that the education ministry is implementing via radio, television and through the newspapers should enable learners in the other classes to be assessed and move to the next class.

Alex Kakooza, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education and Sports, says the school calendar has been adjusted to provide enough time for learners to cover everything the learners ought to have covered within the entire academic year.

“As a ministry, we realised that COVID-19 is not going away tomorrow and has become a new normal,” he told The Observer in a recent interview. The Ministry of Education has been working behind the scenes to see how institutions can operate again, he said. Kakooza said his ministry has been working with the Ministry of Health to ensure that when schools reopen, nothing compromises the health of learners.

Extra-curricular activities, visiting days, and career days have all been scraped off the education calendar. Students are banned from using public transport. Instead all schools in urban centres should have special buses or vans on designated routes to transport learners who cannot walk or be privately driven to school. And such transport has been restricted within a radius of 5km from the school.

Schools have been asked to register all learners and their modes of transport to and from school, according to the guidelines.

The education ministry has further advised parents under the “emergency public health situation” to identify schools nearest to their homes to enroll their children in the meantime to avoid risks, unnecessary costs and inconveniences of long distances to schools.

But as school administrators work quickly to have the SOPs infrastructure in place before students return, it appears there is one area that has escaped scrutiny by the government technocrats: how to mentally prepare the students for resumption of school.

Some of the students The Independent has spoken to have welcomed the resumption of school but they are also uncertain about the future.

Students, parents worried

Sisto Akol, 18, has been waiting patiently in his home town of Moroto in northeastern Uganda for the government to either declare a dead year or call for resumption of school.

He is a S.6 student at Kiira College Butiki in Jinja and he is reading History, Economics, Divinity and sub-Math. He told The Independent on Oct.01 that when President halted the academic year in March, he thought students would be home for a short time. He instead found himself staying home for close to seven months.

“I lost the fire for books and school.” Akol told The Independent in a telephone interview. He says at one time he considered opening up a small business to supplement home income but that too was problematic because the government was never clear about the academic year.

Although, he is looking forward to finishing high school, he feels anxious about certain things he has no control over. He mentions having to start second term without finishing first term. He is also worried about completing the syllabus in time ahead of the final exams which are slated for April, next year.

“This is going to be problematic for teachers. Unless UNEB gives them certain considerations like which topics to put emphasis upon, our teachers are going to be under pressure as they attempt to finish the syllabus.”

Wyvine Alesi, 12, a P.7 candidate at St. Padre Pio primary school Busunju, Wakiso District, feels fairly good about going back to school though she would have loved to go back next year.

“I am a bit scared to go back to school because I am not sure if my fellow pupils can follow the COVID-19 SOPs,” she says,

“When COVID-19 had come and we were told about social distancing, it was hard. Pupils don’t listen.” But Harriet Bakole, Alesi’s mother says she is not ready to take her daughter back to school.

“I am worried about school fees. Where am I going to get money within this short period? I have just gone back to work.

The lockdown affected me.” She adds that she is not comfortable sending her daughter back to school with the surge of the coronavirus.

She says she is not sure about her daughter’s safety at school. “I haven’t heard from her school yet. So I don’t know how prepared they are to look after our children,” she adds. Bakole also says the guidelines put in place by the government are unfair. “My daughter studies in Busunju. Government says that all pupils should use private means going to school but I don’t own a car.

Where am I going to get money to hire a special car to take her to school?” Francis Magezi, 15, a P.7 candidate from Friends Primary School in Bundibugyo District in western Uganda has spent most of the past seven months hovering between his family’s garden and studying via UBC radio.

He says he has been able to learn fairly well using the national radio and he feels ready to go back to school to prepare for the Primary Leaving Examinations.

Meanwhile, Jacob Nderema, who is the headmaster at Friends Primary School, told The Independent on Sept. 30 that the lockdown was a tough experience for both his teachers and pupils but he devised a way of keeping in touch with all the P.7 candidates and he thinks they will all come back to school ready to resume studies on Oct. 15.

“We had to keep in touch with them, we would visit them and counsel some of them,” he told The Independent in a telephone interview.

Thanks to the close relationship he has kept with his 31 candidates, he says most of the syllabus they should have covered in the first term was covered during lockdown and the remaining time given to the candidates should be enough to prepare his pupils for their primary leaving examinations.

“We are ready for the resumption of school,” he said, “The school has enough space for both the teachers and the pupils. We have also procured a temperature gun and enough JIK (disinfectant),” Nderema told The Independent.