Minister for Federal Education & Professional Training and National Heritage, Shafqat Mehmood has said that all schools and universities will reopen from February 1 as the country has witnessed “too much loss” on the education front due to the pandemic.
The minister said this while talking to the media in Sukkur on Saturday during a visit to Mir Masum’s Minar, a Mughal era monument.
Under the government plan, all remaining educational institutes will resume in-person learning from next month. A meeting was held last week at the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) to finalise the strategy for the resumption of classes at the primary, middle and university level — on February 1. The forum decided that students in Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore and Peshawar will attend classes with 50% strength on alternative days.
The officials also directed the concerned authorities to reopen the education sector with strict recommendations of staggered classes for three days a week in the urban centres, in light of the higher coronavirus positivity ratio reported there.
However, universities will resume operations as per the usual schedule. The forum was informed that globally, the disease trend had witnessed a hike after the complete reopening of the education sector, therefore the approach to cut down the attendance on a given day would help in reducing the resurgence of the contagion.
