After the end of the two weeks «distance learning»

Schools set up precautionary plans for students' return to classes

Work to achieve a safe return to schools in a hybrid education environment.

Photography: Najeeb Mohammed

School administrations developed plans based on allocating isolation rooms, sterilization, and security and safety teams, to receive students in the classroom, after the end of the two weeks of "distance learning" in which schools started the second semester, stressing concern for the safety of students, and the completion of the educational process in light of The circumstances of the Corona pandemic.

In the return to school plan, the Ministry of Education specified that the attendance of students in the hybrid education system, which the ministry will implement, will be 50% in the school, and 50% “remotely”, and students are divided into two groups A and B, so that students of group A attend on Sunday and Monday, Group B students attend Wednesday and Thursday, and sterilization operations are taking place for schools on Tuesday.

The deputy director of a private school, Faten Saeed, said: “The school has put in place several plans to ensure the safety of students returning to their classes, after two weeks of remote study, including thermal examination for students before boarding school buses, and before entering the school, and it emphasizes physical distancing. To the constant warning to the students' families not to allow them to leave the house if they show any symptoms.

She added that the duration of the second semester is very short, so it is necessary to use all of his time in teaching students very carefully, whether by attending school or distance learning, pointing out that the school supports its students to perform make-up examinations, and at the same time studying the courses of the second semester.

The director of Abu Saeed Al-Khudri School for Basic Education, Ali Hamad Al-Badwawi, said: “The school has set several procedures to receive students to study in school classes, in case the Ministry of Education decides that, in implementation of precautionary measures against Corona infection.”

He continued: “The plan includes that the number of students in a class does not exceed 16 students, taking care to check the temperature of the students when they get off the bus by a team formed by the school director, as well as examining them while they ride the bus at the end of the school day, through thermometers. The school administration bought it, in addition to forming the school's security and safety team, with developing an emergency plan, a sterilization plan, allocating an isolation room, as well as developing an integrated plan for smart learning.

He added, "Our role will be to teach students who are in the school, and students who are at home at the same time, with allocating a weekly science class through the virtual laboratory that is tasked with the laboratory secretary and science teachers, and we have dedicated a technical technical team to solve the technical problems facing students."

An administrator in a government secondary school, who preferred not to be named, stated that the school will receive 50% of its students next week, and precautionary measures have been taken to preserve the safety of students.

'Hybrid education'

Finally, the educational councils discussed with the schools a proposal for the return of Emirati school students to the “hybrid education” model in the second semester, which is based on achieving a safe return to schools in the hybrid education environment, during which the expected impacts and methodologies for ensuring student safety are determined in the first place through restructuring Operating schools, while applying preventive and health precautionary measures to confront the outbreak of the Coronavirus, determining the schools ’capacity for classrooms, and clarifying the mechanism for dividing students into groups according to the type of school building to ensure safe resumption, in addition to clarifying the mechanism for managing the educational facility and student movement.

In the proposal of recovery plans for the school operations sector for the safe return to schools and the application of hybrid education, the Ministry explained the tendencies towards the return of 50% of school students in the hybrid education system, through reciprocal attendance between real education and direct education, according to specific alternating timetables to maintain preventive and precautionary measures. The Ministry has set the working hours for high school students only in mid-January, the first week of February for the seventh and eighth grades, and the second week of the same month for the third and fourth grades, and in the third week of February, all the remaining classes will last.

The attendance of Emirati school students will be according to a timetable for hybrid education (real-life school education, distance education), and most activities and events are suspended until the safety of Emirati school students is assessed and replaced by virtual activities.

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