President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is receiving briefings from COVID-19 Technical Taskforce on limited school re-openings and would make a firm decision on school reopening in January 2021 after a Cabinet meeting on December 30, 2020.
Addressing a news conference in Accra on COVID-19 Updates on Tuesday, Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said the COVID-19 Taskforce would work throughout the Christmas period to brief the President and analyse the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students, during the limited school re-openings in July, August, September, and October, this year.
Government in July allowed final year students in the tertiary education institutions to complete their semester courses and wrote their exit examinations.
The final year Senior High School students also returned to complete their term courses and wrote the West African Examination Certificate (WAEC), while the final year Junior High School students undertook the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in September and in October, second-year JHS and SHS students returned to school to complete their term courses.
During the period, some students and teachers contracted the Coronavirus disease and were isolated, tested and treated.
It is in light of this, members of the COVID-19 Taskforce were briefing the President in order to inform the Government’s decision whether basic schools should be reopened in January 2021.
The Information Minister said a sub-committee on school reopening would soon be constituted to plan and strategize the way forward. That, he said, would ensure that the school environment would not become a haven for spreading the respiratory.