AZARIA FAREEN
The Government has always put the health and safety of children and ordinary Fijians as one of its highest priorities.
As such, a day after Fiji’s first case of COVID-19 (corona virus), the Government made a firm decision and on March 20, 2020, announced the closure of all schools Fiji-wide placing children, parents and teachers alike out of harm’s way. In ensuring that children were not deprived of any form of education, the Ministry of Education came up with a strategy of supplementary home-based educational support mechanisms to guarantee students are engaged and continue learning while they were still at home and safe.
Nazmin Khan, a parent of three children attending school has applauded the initiative of the Government in ensuring that her children’s time is spent wisely while they are at home.
“This is a great move by the ministry to have educational materials ready for the students in their respective classes so they are not sitting idle at home,” Mrs Khan said.
“This current situation is un-fortunate and I thank the Prime Minister for having the foresight in ensuring the safety of our children and also thinking of ways for them to continue with their education from home,” she added.
“My son is in Year 13 and he has been a great help since the school closed. He is a bright student and continues to work on his worksheets while helping his two younger sisters with their revision. He helps me with household chores, listens to educational radio programmes and watches the educational Channel 9 program so he is well prepared when school opens.”
Speaking in Parliament last month, Minister for Education Rosy Akbar noted that high levels of parental engagement since the closure of the school and com-mended parents for their tireless effort in ensuring students study well at home.
“We prepared and uploaded the first round of worksheets on the Ministry’s website on March 21, 2020 for all levels from Early Childhood Education to secondary schools and two months later a total of 169,167 worksheets had been downloaded,” Minister Akbar said.
“We had radio broadcast literacy and numeracy lessons for four hours per day, three hours daily on two different stations, totalling 23 hours per week, from 6th April, 2020, while 80 lessons have been successfully recorded and launched in our first Free to Air Educational Channel 9 on Walesi TV,” she added.
“Our schools continue to use Facebook, e-mail, Viber and Google Drive to continue uploading such worksheets which are available to our students and parents.”
Minister Akbar adds that teachers have gone out of their way to arrange for worksheets to be delivered to children residing in maritime islands who continue to remain home during this COV-ID-19 school closure.
The anticipated school reopening date is now set for Tuesday, June 30, 2020.