Africa-Press – Uganda. EDUCATION | COVID-19 |Economic Development Partners have appealed to the Government to ensure that schools are immediately and fully, re-opened so that children can resume learning.Koen Van Acoleyen, who represented the Ambassador of Belgium to Uganda at the 27th education sector review which was held at Hotel Africana, in his speech, noted that about 14 million learners, “Have not been to school for more than eight months. Out of them, the majority have had no access to any kind of materials to continue learning.””As schools re-open, we already see, and anticipate, that many learners will drop out and not get back to the education system,” he explained.Indeed, students in continuing classes who are at home following the closure of schools due to COVID-19, are expecting printed homework from Government; courtesy of a $14.57m (sh54b) grant through the World Bank, which was sent to Uganda in October. But the Government has delayed the release of an additional $30.43m (sh112bn) to adequately implement all print work for all lower classes.Acoleyen called upon the Government to re-open all classes. He said, “Schools will have to re-open, sooner or later. I urge the Government of Uganda and the education ministry to keep working on the preparation for full re-opening. With the support of economic development partners, including the United Nation agencies, good practices and innovations from across the world can be taken as a reference.”Acoleyen adds, “So, let us join forces and start working in the direction of re-opening the schools fully.”The Government on October 15, opened candidate classes and finalists in universities, after six months of the education institutions’ closure.The institutions had been closed at the end of March this year by Government; to stem the spread of COVID-19 before it spread into communities.The number of those who have contracted COVID-19 is continuously going up every day in Uganda. As of Tuesday morning, there were 23,300 who have contracted the virus. Of these 207 people have already died and 9,374 others have recovered.
