Reopening schools

Saturday 21st November, 2020

Schools are scheduled to reopen for Grade Six to Grade 13, next Monday. Opinion may be divided on this move as COVID-19 is spreading fast, but schools cannot remain closed indefinitely. There are no signs of the virus going away anytime soon, and the World Health Organisation has said humans will have to learn to live with coronavirus for want of a better alternative. In fact, living with the virus is less dangerous than crossing Sri Lankan roads, where about eight lives are snuffed out daily. (In 2019, as many as 2,829 people were killed in 2,641 accidents.)

Parents and teachers will have their work cut out to ensure that carefree schoolchildren adhere to the health guidelines that have been given legal effect to prevent the transmission of coronavirus. Children are known for throwing caution to the wind and trying to do exactly the opposite of what they are instructed to do. There is hardly anything they do not share, and physical distancing is something they loath when it comes to their friends.

On the other hand, schools are overflowing with students. Most of them have about 50 students each crammed into classrooms, and it is well-nigh impossible to observe the physical distancing rule in such an environment. Many schools are without proper sanitary facilities, and this may also lead to the transmission of COVID-19 among students.

It is not only at school that students are exposed to infections; they may get infected while travelling to and from school. Private transport is a luxury most of them cannot afford; they are dependent on trains, buses and school vans. Lucky are the ones who can travel in private vehicles or use Shanks’s pony or cycle to school.

School vehicles sans proper ventilation are chock-a-block with students, as is public knowledge. Not even cattle are allowed to be transported in this manner, but nobody has taken up the plight of students travelling in overcrowded vans.

Students are left with no alternative but to travel in school vans suffering in silence and exposing themselves to infections. These vehicles travel in circuitous routes, and most students have to board them at dawn and spend hours in them before reaching school. They suffer again after school. The government says it will take action to have the school van operators adhere to the health guidelines, but it is highly unlikely that they will do so; they are bent on squeezing as many children into their vehicles and, thereby, maximize profit.

Only some half-hearted attempts have been made to ensure the roadworthiness of school vehicles, whose operators have become a law unto themselves. They hold parents to ransom, and exact fees even during school vacations.

Successive governments have set for themselves ambitious goals as regards education. We have heard many a Finance Minister wax eloquent about what they call their contribution towards the development of the education sector, and promise to develop the school system further. That all of them have failed is evident from the state of the government schools, most of which lack even basic facilities.

It is high time the government made a meaningful intervention to solve students’ transport problem and took steps to launch a countrywide programme to provide all schools with facilities to ensure the safety of students.