Since March 16 last year about four crore students remain out of their respective campuses as the government closed all the educational institutions of the country to prevent the spread of coronavirus. It also made its stand clear that it would not reopen the educational institutions unless the situation of coronavirus infections improved further as it does not want to put students’ lives in danger.
We believe keeping in mind that the “life comes first” the government is framing an effective strategy for reopening of educational institutions in phases. Simultaneously, we also believe the government would take special programmes and measures to make up the learning losses of the students in the next two years as the Covid-19 pandemic has already affected their academic activities in the last 441 days.
As the educational institutions remain shut the threat of session jam is certainly looming large in primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities. Apart from delaying academic plans, uncertainty and anxiety have also griped students due to indefinite holidays. Besides, dropout of a large number of students is also feared.
The government should launch special
academic activities to make up the
learning losses of the students
However, the government plans to reopen secondary and higher secondary educational institutions if the coronavirus situation improves while the universities would reopen after double-dose vaccination of an estimated 1.30 lakh residential students of public universities is completed. Therefore, the education ministry, the university grants commission, authorities of public universities, academic and experts will have to take a concrete decision to continue students’ academic activities during this pandemic.
On the other hand, students and some people continue demanding reopening of the institutions as most of them do not see any logic behind keeping only the educational academic institutions shut while offices, business establishments and courts functioning as usual.
It is worth mentioning that the government had a plan to prepare for reopening the institutions when the number of infections in Bangladesh dwindled but it had to cancel its decision because of the surge in Covid cases. However, now in order to minimise the losses of the students immediately, the education ministry should come up with a strategic plan.
