Education minister announces that schools will be fully reopened on April 25

Education Minister Priya Manickchand said all systems are being put in place to reopen schools
to address the two years of learning loss. Manickchand made this comment on the side lines of
the newly launched artificial intelligence leadership programme, ‘Spark’,
“Some skills that were acquired will be lost and forgotten and you might even have the
phenomena of drop outs presenting itself in larger numbers than we have ever seen before and
we are seeing indications of all of those things so are we ready… We are making sure of course
that schools are ready to be reopened fully from April 25th after the Easter holiday,”
Manickchand said.
The minister said that to ensure teachers and students are prepared for the new term, her ministry
has implemented a staggered system, which will see students revisiting studies from their
previous grade within a 20- week period, before moving on to the new term’s curriculum.
Additionally, Manickchand said that the ministry is working to ensure that every school is
equipped with the necessary tools and equipment to be fully functional before the new term
commences.
Minister Manickchand also announced a new programme that will be rolled out nationally to
target literacy loss in the four core subjects.
“You’re going to see an assault on illiteracy, you will see an entire national programme rolled
out to recover from the literacy loss we would have had and all the gains we would have made
that went down the drain in two years. Every single student is going to be diagnosed, we are
issuing a diagnostic for Mathematics, English, Social Studies and Science – the four cores. Every
student will be diagnosed and each student will be attended to individually to make sure that we
recover from the covid loss,” Manickchand said.
The education ministry had announced the closure of schools back in March 2020, following the
onset of the deadly Coronavirus. The education minister pointed out that the pandemic provided
the ministry with the opportunity to review its literacy programme.