Minister for Education, Heritage and Arts Premila Kumar is optimistic that the number of students returning to school will increase.

This was after she revealed that 60 per cent of the students returned to school on Tuesday.

Ms Kumar said: “The attendance we captured through our FEMIS through the head of schools we have recorded 60 per cent of students attended on the first day of school.

“There are very few isolated classrooms that may be overcrowded for now. We also encouraging head of schools that if the classrooms are overcrowded, they can take the students into open spaces and teach, but we are monitoring the situation and the Ministry of Education is not a health expert and we don’t know the most appropriate measures and we rely on Ministry of Health; we rely on World Health Organisation (WHO) and we rely on UNICEF to guide us on health and safety measures. Whatever the Ministry of Education is doing is based on their guidance.

“This is a pandemic, and we can’t expect 100 per cent attendance. We must start somewhere. We have opened the school and parents are sending their children to school. It is slow, but it is not a normal situation.

“Taking into consideration that the schools were closed for eight months and obviously it has affected our children and some of them don’t want to come back and we know that because we are talking to the heads of schools and we are talking to the parents as well.

“We are talking to the parents and convincing them to send their children to school, but as I said the option is up to the parents to make the decision.”

Ms Kumar said they have plans if things get worse.

“If situation gets out of hand, we will consider other options like splitting a class into two and have one set come one day and the other set on another day, but that is not required right now,” she said.

Ms Kumar said some students went to get the COVID-19 jabs on Tuesday as the vaccination campaign continues.

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