Afghanistan Times
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KABUL: The government announced to reopen all state-run school on October 3rd across the country, while the threats of Corona virus pandemic are not completely removed.
All government and private schools and universities remained closed for five months because of the epidemic threats.
The universities reopened in early August and the government announced to reopen government schools party and private ones completely in late August.
Now, the cabinet decides to reopen schools from first to 12th grades. Some 10 million students were deprived from education from March 22nd until now.
The decision was made after the ministry of education announced last week that reopening of schools did not cause of further infection to the Corona virus as it was expected to.
Experts call keeping government schools closed as “injustice”.
Fereshta Karim, a child rights activist, said Tuesday that keeping schools closed would hurt only poor children who are not able to pay to enroll to private schools.
“Wrong policies can put harmful impacts on the school children’s moral,” she said, adding that children play in the streets when schools are closed and this threatens them more to get infected.
The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) said in a report that the unprecedented pause in education can harm achievements gained in girls’ education in the past two decades.
Zarqa Yaftali, education expert criticizes the policy over schools, saying that the developed countries did not reopen schools despite enjoying all sources, but Afghanistan did it with nothing.
“The government was better to reopen schools next year with a compact program to teach two terms in one year,” she said.
