TEACHERS and school management staff must be given priority in the second phase of the national immunisation plan to ensure the continuity of education for students.
This is in light of health minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba’s recent revelation that there have been 4,868 COVID-19 infections and 83 clusters linked to the education sector in the four months of 2021.
At the moment, there are over 500,000 teachers nationwide but only a total of 10% have been inoculated, and this must be sped up as soon as possible to avoid school learning sessions from being affected.
True, it is high time that schools reopen, but the spike in education clusters is a matter for great concern for parents who are worried about the possibility of COVID-19 cases spreading in schools when face-to-face teaching and learning is fully implemented.
This is so much so that many of them have proposed for schools to close and for students to return to home-based teaching and learning. But while this idea is appealing, make no mistake, it also has far-reaching ramifications.
After the implementation of home-based teaching and learning for almost one year, one thing that is for sure is that the country’s preparation and readiness for online learning is still below par.
There are three critical issues that would determine the quality of home-based learning: access to gadgets or suitable devices; internet connectivity and bandwidth; and adequate content for Education TV. In Malaysia, these issues, unfortunately, remain mostly unaddressed and are severely lacking.
In this case, the ramifications of reverting back to online classes would be felt especially by students from the B40 segment of the society who lack the means for online learning.
As such, vaccinating teachers should become a priority and must be regarded as a critical step towards creating an environment that is safe for children and provides stability for the education ecosystem.
This will no doubt help protect teachers from the virus, allow them to conduct face-to-face teaching, and of course, keep schools open without having to worry about education clusters. – April 25, 2021
