Today, Saturday, the new school year began in the schools of the Gaza Strip, after a vacation that lasted nearly 5 months due to the Corona pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of students have returned to their schools in the Gaza Strip, under precautionary measures to prevent Corona virus. The first month of study will be devoted to compensating students for basic subjects lessons that they were absent from last school year due to the Corona pandemic.
Ziad Thabet, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education in the Hamas government, told reporters, "During this August, students will receive remedial materials, while the number of classes on the school day will be only 4."
Thabet added, "The ministry has prepared a plan from multiple scenarios to deal with the school year, including the various stages."
For its part, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said in a statement that it had received 285,768 Palestine refugee students in 277 schools, including 32,83 students in the first grade of primary school.
She added, "The first four weeks will be devoted to remedial education, in order to re-energize students and integrate them into the educational process to make up for the skills they have missed as a result of stopping their studies after declaring the state of emergency due to the Covid-19 crisis.
The agency's statement stated, "It has implemented a set of preventive measures, the most prominent of which is the provision of all necessary materials to sterilize and disinfect schools, and training on how to use sterilizers and disinfectants effectively."
She pointed out that all schools have been sterilized without exception in preparation for receiving students, indicating that all measures have been taken to provide a safe and healthy environment for all students in their schools.
The agency said, "In the current stage, the morning queue will be canceled and the rest in the school yard between classes will be replaced with a rest inside the classroom, interspersed with some recreational activities, while ensuring that children go out to the toilets without crowding or jostling," stressing that "these procedures will be reviewed on a weekly basis for evaluation." Follow up and make the necessary improvements. "
According to Nariman Weshah, director of Balqis Al-Yaman Secondary School in Gaza, the ministry has adopted 3 scenarios for the crisis, the first is the full attendance of female students during the summer vacation, and the second scenario is for female students to attend an average of 50%, or 3 days per week, and the third scenario is e-learning, but as long as the Gaza Strip is empty Of any infections from the Coronavirus, the first scenario was adopted by returning to the classroom.
About two million people live in the impoverished Gaza Strip, which has been besieged by Israel since 2007, two-thirds of whom are refugees. The Hamas Ministry of Health recorded 78 cases of the new Corona virus in the Gaza Strip, and one death.