By Mabinty M. Kamara
With schools set to reopen next week, amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Sierra Leone’s teachers have expressed concern over the lack of preparedness with regards infection prevention control.
The Sierra Leone Teachers Union (SLTU), which represents the interest of the country’s teachers, say they are concerned about the safety of both the teachers and pupils.
According to the union, their members are very well ready to resume classes in the interest of the country, but they said they want a proper mechanism to protect them against the virus to be put in place. They also are calling on the government to fulfil a promise to train teachers on infection prevention control measures in the context of Covid-19.
Alieu Been-Conteh, Deputy Secretary General of SLTU, told Politico that even though it’s risky, as the children would be coming from different homes and communities, failure to reopening schools now will be more disastrous to the country’s educational system than the fear of COVID-19, if all preventive measures are followed to the later.
“We believe that under the current circumstance, it will be more disastrous if we don’t reopen school, because to balance between this two decisions, you have to weigh the options. If we don’t open schools for the next six to seven months, what would be the damage that it would cost the country, the children and especially the girls? So when you think of that and also considering the fact that the situation of COVID in Sierra Leone is not as bad as in other countries, we believe that we can manage the situation with the support of the stakeholders through effective compliance,” he said.
He added: “So that is the risk that we are taking with an estimated total of 2.6 million pupils, which is a huge number. But we have decided to support the government to reopen schools on certain conditions.”
Been-Conteh noted that the union was part of a committee set up by the ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary School Education (MBSSE), called the Emergency Education Taskforce, to plan for the initial partial school reopening which they have tried to manage without recording any case of COVID in schools. He added that the taskforce will continue its function to plan ahead of the school reopening and that they would love to continue to be part of the taskforce as one of the conditions.
The SLTU official noted that the government promised to train teachers on both COVID-19 preventive measures and psychosocial support to help affected children sail through their different experiences.
“The training should have two elements; how to tackle COVID in case of emergency with those plenty kids per class. And it requires specialized training, it’s not something that they should get by hearsay. And in that same training, they should train the teachers on how to provide psychosocial support to vulnerable children who may be sad or mentally disturb as a result of losing close relatives. So that is our worry now. The training is yet to be conducted and the reopening date is close,” he said
He said the training is for only government and government assisted schools, noting that the private schools are part of the taskforce and so they are expected to replicate same in their schools but at their own expense.
Been-Conteh went on to note that during the Ebola pandemic, similar training was conducted for all teachers but because the government said there was not enough resources this time round to support the process, they resorted to training two teachers per school, so that those teachers will in turn train their colleagues in their respective schools.
“We are willing to go to class, but the government has to play its part to ensure both the safety of the children and the teachers. Also they should provide facemasks and hand washing buckets. The key challenge is with the social distancing, because all those empty classrooms which we were using to ensure social distance during the partial school reopening, are now going to be occupied. So we are still thinking of the possibility to arrange the attendance in schools, but all those are yet to be sorted and those are possible risks,” he said, adding that they don’t want to have a situation where schools will have to be closed again as a result of rise in the number of cases as it has happen in other countries.
Politico contacted the spokesman for the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary School Education two days before publication of this story, but he did not respond.
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