By Mabinty M. Kamara
The Government of Sierra Leone has announced that school and colleges should be shut down by the 31st of March this year. The announcement means that schools will close a week before they were scheduled to.
The move by the Ministries of Basic and Senior Secondary Education and Technical and Tertiary Education, is part of a raft of measures that were announced on Friday to prevent the country from the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic.
In a joint press statement, the ministries ordered all schools and colleges to wrap up exams and teaching.
“All educational institutions will close on Tuesday, 31st March 2020 and heads of institutions will be duly informed about the date for the resumption of the school system,” the statement reads.
“Over the next couple of weeks, the Government through it Ministries, Departments and Agencies will implement several planned activities prior to the closure of educational institutions. Every pre-primary, Primary and Secondary school students should submit a valid contact number of their parents/guardians. All heads of educational institutions should provide at least two valid contact numbers for their schools to their respective ministries,” the statement continued.
The move to protect students and pupils has been incremental during the week.
This week, the Ministry of Basic Education had already announced that schools should not hold devotions and should split classes with more than 100 people.
The early closure will also affect public examination which are scheduled to start in May, June and July. Government said they will announce a new date for the exams.
The closure is now guaranteed to affect the already short academic calendar for colleges. The reopening of colleges was delayed by three months for the current academic year.
Some colleges across the country have been writing exams since the start of the week.
Fourah Bay College are just a week in to a two weeks examination period. The college will now have to hurry through the rest of its examination timetable.
This week, the government had already announced measures which include barring public gatherings of more than 100 people.
The 2014 Ebola epidemic drastically altered the academic calendar for schools and colleges in the country.
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