What is the right way for schools to reopen?

Schools are in a state of confusion worldwide. While it is difficult to find any good news about COVID-19, the global capital of the pandemic has provided some this week. The two pieces of good news appeared from the United States on Thursday.

One, all the people in the COVID-19 vaccine trial by Moderna developed anti-bodies. Which is good progress for the development of a vaccine. Two, Center for Disease Control of the same country said that coronavirus could be put under control in one to two months if people wear masks when they go out.

Yet, in spite of the good news, the same sources say that the earliest the vaccine could be ready would be next year. That is why many teachers are concerned about the push by President Trump and other officials to reopen schools – on account of the dire consequences predicted by experts.

Therefore, bracing themselves for the reopening, many teachers have been reported to have taken extra life insurance, have written wills and designated people with power of attorney over their health.

Which brings us to our schools and teachers in Nigeria. Even here, some patterns are beginning to emerge. For example, it appears that we are going to be in it for a long time – especially for schools. In some countries such as Malaysia, schools have resumed cautiously. Last week, a teacher from Malaysia sent me a picture of how that looked like.

In other countries, reopening of schools led to sad news.

Which is why it is difficult to argue with the federal government of Nigeria over its refusal to allow reopening of schools.

So what should schools do? What will teachers eat? The public school teachers still get their salary. But private schools owners and their teachers have been having a difficult time. Therefore, some have adopted different methods to stay alive.

There are some schools which completely stopped paying teachers and ended any communication with their students. Some schools powered through and paid full April salary, half of May, 30% of June and don’t know what will become of July.

There are others which give a stripped-down version of the curriculum and teach the children through WhatsApp and other online platforms. And the parents contribute something every month to appreciate the efforts of the teachers. As a PTA chairman myself, this is what we do at our school – keep the children engage and give some money to the teachers who help them – even it is far from enough.

But there is even a more daring strategy. Some schools completely defied the government and continued running as usual. The only thing that changed for them was moving the entire operation online.

The children attend schools online from morning to noon. They do test and examinations and study all the subjects – and every teacher is engaged in teaching. This is a brilliant strategy. In fact, even at normal times, I believe every school should have an online version of itself.

But while this is a good deal for such schools and their teachers because they get almost their entire salary (because the schools also charge almost the entire school fees – having only given the parents 30% discount) it also has three clear holes in the arrangement.

Other than the fact they can run afoul of the law, what happens if the government reopens schools and aligned their calendar with those who obeyed the lockdown?

The exit examinations (such as NECO and WAEC and even the foreign ones) are likely to unite with the government’s time table. (Even though it is reported that states in the Southwest said they are ready for WAEC.)

When that happens, schools which refused to answer the lockdown guidelines would have two choices: repeat their term or continue to be a term ahead of others.

If they choose to do their term again, the advantage for students here is that the term would be a review for them but would the parents pay for review or for the same content they had already paid for?

And if the schools decide to be one term ahead of everyone else, they would still have difficulties aligning their schedules to everyone else’s. Viewing it in this light, there are a lot of uncertainties ahead.

The second hole in this arrangement is that some parents have refused to pay. How would the schools respond to this set of parents? When the schools reopen nationally and the parents offer to pay the regular school fees,are they going to be turned back? Are their children going to be expelled or would they be owing the school?

And would the schools be justified to collect debt over the knowledge that the students didn’t consume? And would they be justified to expel students because their parents opted to obey the government instead of the schools – when it is the government that regulates the running of schools?

The third problem is that there were parents who paid and their children refused to participate in the online education.

This is the chief frustration of teachers. If you are a teacher you would understand.  Every teacher wants to carry all her students along. But if a child paid school fees and didn’t attend class due to laziness or another reason, what would you do? Introduce new material or slow down the class so that they would catch up or create a special class to accommodate the absentees?

However we look at the options whether we obeyed the government or disobeyed, we all lost something. But this is nobody’s fault.  And while we continue to stagger in darkness, we can only hope and pray that this fog of coronavirus is lifted soon.

This column welcomes responses by schools, parents or students.