Al-Nahar - After a long break imposed by the coronavirus, pupils will return to their desks starting from 28 May until the end of July, according to what the Minister of Education and Higher Education Tarek Al-Majzoub announced at a press conference, stressing that the return will be accompanied by “health and psychological measures in cooperation with the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization”. So how are the schools preparing for this return? And what criteria will they follow to preserve the health of their pupils and their teachers?
The Evangelical schools
The Evangelical schools began their meetings some time ago, according to the secretary general of the League of Evangelical Schools in Lebanon Dr. Nabil Costa, who added: “We have an official meeting today at five in the afternoon, and we will form a committee to redesign the curricula so that distance learning complements attendance in the classroom - something that is not easy for us, but it eases the questions and the torment for the families; and what a pupil does not understand remotely they can understand in the classroom.” Regarding the health conditions he answered: “We prepared ourselves, as I knew in advance of the Minister of Education's decision. The matter will centre on reducing attendance at school, where the number must not exceed 35 per cent, that is between 12 and 14 pupils in the classroom. We do not yet have a complete plan for how to divide them; we have two weeks to complete it.”
The Catholic schools
Likewise, the Catholic schools are preparing at the educational and health levels for the pupils' return. The secretary general of the Catholic Schools Father Boutros Azar affirmed that “we tasked the educational office with drawing up the conceptions, and the committees we formed have produced studies from which we will take the conclusions and announce them to the schools. Starting from next week we will hold online meetings with those concerned with the matter to prepare for how to receive the pupils and guide them.” Regarding the health conditions he answered: “They are the focus of our attention and we are working on them with the educational office, but we are awaiting the Ministry of Education's directives so as to complement them.”
The schools of Al-Maqased Association
From the educational standpoint, Al-Maqased's schools will adopt, according to the association's director of teaching Ghina Al-Badawi, “blended teaching even after the end of the coronavirus crisis, which rests on combining distance learning and classroom teaching”. She added: “We have not stopped teaching since the coronavirus crisis began, and we will continue to follow up the objectives and competencies. We have about fifty teaching days, so priorities must be set; and in cooperation with the Ministry of Education the lessons to be dropped will be determined - we are in contact with our teachers on the Educational Centre's committees to learn them.” She noted that “the Ministry of Education has set 4 hours of teaching a day at the schools and the necessity of maintaining a safe distance: if a classroom's capacity is 25 pupils, about 25 will attend, so we will work on setting different shifts.” On the health measures she affirmed: “We have 24 schools, each with its own particularity and administration, and we were in discussion with them today about the steps they will follow. The focus will be on sterilizing the schools, the classrooms, the toilets and the transport buses. We will specify the foods sold in the schools and give directions to the pupils not to exchange food.”
*The schools of Al-Mabarrat Association
The deputy director of teaching at Al-Mabarrat Association Rana Ismail affirmed: “We are ready to receive the pupils, and we will carry out a survey of the number of pupils in each class to know whether we need to follow up with them remotely or not. We have drawn up a detailed protocol of health criteria addressed to the pupils, the families and the administrations, after research we carried out on the protocols of foreign schools; we have to some extent adopted the French protocol, which rests on three foundations: a metre's distance between one pupil and another, the necessity of a mask for pupils from the second primary grade upwards, and the necessity for every pupil to bring a sanitizer with them, or to wash their hands at set intervals.” She added: “We will measure the pupils' temperature three times daily, and no one may enter the school before their body temperature is measured - in addition to sterilizing the toilets, the classrooms and the buses; and the supervisor of each bus will ensure that every pupil sanitizes their hands and puts on a mask.” She affirmed that “the medical team in each school will supervise the pupils' health“.*
