Many government and non-government school head teachers have said that they will not be able to maintain all the guidelines set by the government after the mid-February reopening of educational institutions.

They said that many government primary schools did not have any wash blocks or facilities for washing hands while most government secondary schools, non-government schools and kindergartens were running with very limited number of washrooms as well as classrooms.

It would be difficult to maintain health guidelines, they added.

Head teachers of several non-government schools and kindergartens told New Age on Thursday that they would instruct parents to provide hand sanitisers and masks to ensure safety amid the COVID-19 outbreak.

The parents, on the other hand, said that forcing them to buy sanitisers would mean additional financial burden.

Education minister Dipu Moni and state minister for primary and mass education Md Zakir Hossain in the past one week told the press on several occasions that they had plans to reopen educational institutions in the second week of February in a limited scale if the COVID-19 situation did not further deteriorate.

On Thursday, Dipu Moni said that Higher Secondary Certificate and Secondary School Certificate candidates would be asked to go to institutions six days a week while other classes would attend classes by rotation so that the number of students remained at a manageable level.

She also said that the syllabuses of the SSC and HSC would be further streamlined so that the secondary students could complete the syllabuses in 60 days while the higher secondary students could finish it in 84 days.

Zakir Hossian told New Age on Thursday that they had plans to bring Class V students regularly while pre-primary students would not be asked to go to schools unless COVID-19 situation became normal.

Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education and Directorate of Primary  Education last week separately passed instructions for the educational institutions for cleaning all the institutions that remained closed from March 17, 2020 and develop facilities maintaining guidelines given by the agencies by February 4 for the reopening of institutions on short notice.

As per the last instructions passed on Friday, educational institutions would remain closed till February 14.

The DPE asked the 65,625 government primary schools across the country to develop facilities from the School Level Improvement Project fund.

The DSHE did not mention the source of funds for developing facilities for maintaining health guidelines for the pupils, teachers and staffers.

‘From the School Level Improvement Project, a school gets between Tk 15,000 and Tk 40,000, depending on the number of students. With this money it will not be possible to develop health safety facilities when 30 per cent of the government primary schools do not have wash blocks,’ said Md Anwarul Islam Tota, president of Bangladesh Primary Teachers Association.

‘Most of the government primary schools also have a very limited number of classrooms,’ he said.