Irrespective of the frustrating concerns raised by anxious parents over the unfortunate handling of COVID-19 cases and their accompanying measures in schools, management of the Ghana Education Service (GES) says its findings rather show parents are pleased with the instituted protocols thus far.
Director-General of the GES, Prof. Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa disclosed that “so far the parents who have called me and my other officials, are so glad about the measures we have put in place and how we are handling the issues”.
Justifying this position notwithstanding the large number of parents who have stormed schools with recorded cases of COVID-19 to demand the release of their children,
Prof. Amankwa said it was because “the media created panic which for me was needless”.
Since the reopening of schools for final year students to enable them to partake in their exit examinations, parents, educational stakeholders, the Minority in Parliament, the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the National Council for Parent Teacher Association (PTA) have called for the closure of the schools given the increase in the number of cases being recorded in the schools.
The GES boss dismissed calls for students to be allowed to return home insisting “that they will come back with the infections they have collected in the schools into the larger society for the bigger society to be infected. Is that what we want?”
“I don’t think this is what the conversations should be. The conversations should rather be on what measures have been put in place for issues like safety. The health people tell us that we will be better off keeping them in there and treating them,” Prof. Amankwah stressed.
Apart from the Accra Girls SHS where 55 individuals including students and staff have contracted the virus, other schools across the country have also confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 but GHS and GES say those cases “have not experienced a surge,” as seen in Accra Girls’ SHS.
