Pressure on the Govt to Manage alternative to School Quarantine
The increasing number of quarantines in community schools to keep people infected with the coronavirus has had a serious and far-reaching impact on the education sector.
There is a need to look for alternatives in quarantine in schools as there will be problems in the implementation of the government's policy of re-operating the school, there will be no alternative method of teaching and there will be an inconvenience in the final assessment of students of Secondary Education Examination (SEE).
So far, quarantine rooms have been constructed in 4,522 schools and isolation rooms in 67 schools. It has been said that if quarantine is not created in schools in this way and other alternatives are not found, there will be a bad impact on the teaching in the school area of Nepal.
Community buildings are Best Option for Quarantine:
Krishna Thapa, president of the Federation of Community School Management Committees, said that they have demanded quarantine in areas other than schools. He said that it would be appropriate to use ward buildings, community buildings, and vacant agriculture and forest office buildings in many places. He said that it would be very frightening if thousands of schools could be quarantined if they did not think of alternatives.
He expressed concern that if a patient dies in the school quarantine, many children will be psychologically anxious to return to school and this may increase their dropout rate.
SEE results could be problematic
As the quarantine of schools has increased, it has become difficult for schools to conduct internal assessments of SEE students. It is said that quarantine in 4,506 schools will cause problems for the headmasters and teachers to go to school and do necessary work, which will lead to problems in publishing the results of SEE. The school is scheduled to conduct an internal assessment of the students and send them to the coordination unit in the district by Ashad 20. However, there may be a problem in getting the final assessment of students from many schools.
Baburam Thapa, president of the Nepal Federation of Teachers, said that there were many problems in quarantining schools and that there was no need to increase the number and look for alternatives. The federation has drawn the attention of the Minister of Education, Science, and Technology in this regard. The school desks, benches, drinking water, toilets, classrooms, and open premises are also used in the quarantine, so the people concerned have to be very careful.
Government looking for alternatives
The government has stated that there is no policy to quarantine all schools and efforts are being made to find alternatives. Gehnath Gautam, director of the Center for Education and Human Development Resources, said that the existing quarantine is gradually being vacated as it is the government's policy to keep the coronavirus (Covid-19) infected in the home quarantine.
He expressed the belief that the quarantine would not be in the school for a long time as the government was also busy with the homework of reopening the school and all the schools had to be reopened at the same time. He said that teaching in a school but keeping a school as a quarantine would feel inconsistent even in practical terms.
