The scheduled opening of schools next month on June 16th will be reviewed by the Ministry of Education, with advice from the Ministry of Health.

This was revealed yesterday in Parliament by the Minister for Education, Rosy Akbar, who said schools would only open when the country was COVID-19 free.

“We are still in uncertain times and we cannot confirm when schools will open, but hopefully, we will try to see that we open the doors of our schools to children as and when the Ministry of Health gives us a COVID-19 free Fiji sign,” she said.

“We still have active COVID-19 cases. Once the ministry gives us the green light then we will look at approaches to restart schools.”

She commended schools that have started airing audiovisual forms of educational material for their students. To date, there are only three active cases of COVID-19 in the country.

As for students who are unable to access supplementary materials, Ms Akbar said they had no reason to panic.

“Should we open schools, we will realign our curriculum to ensure that when we test our students if we are going to have normal exams. No child will be deprived,” the minister said.

She said schools had covered 40 per cent of the curriculum when it closed in Week 10 and they would do their best to cover the remaining 60 per cent before tests were conducted.

Edited by Naisa Koroi

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