Will they, won't they… open the schools?

Will they, won't they… open the schools?

While the Education Minister wrote on his social network profile about how he wants to help students and teachers manage distance learning until January, Prime Minister Igor Matovič announced that he has decided to take the matter into his own hands. He wants some schools to open for pupils already on Monday.

On Wednesday, Matovič said that he has had enough of listening to the Education Ministry's excuses for not opening the schools. He said he can see that some principals and mayors are willing to include their respective schools and towns in mass testing for COVID-19. Thus Matovič signalled that some schools could reopen as early as on December 7. "My goal is to have X number of schools reopened in Slovakia on Monday. It's purely my own initiative. I've informed the ministers," Matovič claimed, noting that the private school attended by his own daughters is among those set to engage in the pilot testing.

In reaction to the announcement by the PM, opposition's Smer-SD party claimed that it is necessary to make all elementary school pupils and high school students go back to school as soon as possible or else they might be left undereducated. Independent lawmakers around Peter Pellegrini stated that the Prime Minister should not secure the return to schools only for his two daughters but rather for all children in Slovakia. Because of this, they called on him to make all elementary school pupils and high school students go back to school as of December 7.

"Now is not the time for political disputes, children need to return to school," President Zuzana Čaputová stated on Wednesday, adding that despite the enormous efforts of parents and teachers, distance learning is not a full-fledged alternative to the teaching process. "Unfortunately, before our very eyes part of one generation of children and young people is incurring an educational debt that will accompany them perhaps for the rest of their lives," said the president, adding that every day at school matters because every single day without school means not only an educational shortage but also the absence of social contacts and stimuli needed for proper mental development.

Zuzana Botiková, Photo: TASR

Živé vysielanie ??:??

Práve vysielame