Basic and Secondary Education Minister Claudiana Cole has announced students in grade nine will return to school on Wednesday June 24.
“…I hereby have the singular honour to inform all school authorities, staff, parents and students in particular, and the general public that the re-opening of schools for the Grade 9 Students is scheduled for Wednesday, 24TH June, 2020, and that of grade 12s would be announced in due course. As such, all the other categories of students are urged to stay at home until further notice,” the education minister said in a statement on Friday.
It comes as the education minister revealed the coronavirus pandemic has caused the country to lose over 250 instructional hours with over half a million school-going children affected.
Cole said: “Everyone would agree with me that the pandemic has brought a lot of trauma and uncertainty to all of us either as individuals, a sector, nation, or a world. This is so because it has affected every sector of our society especially the Education sector.
“In Gambia for example, it has directly affected about 674,300 children in Conventional and recognized Madrassahs schools from Early Childhood Development to Senior Secondary School, and resulting to an estimated loss of 265 instructional hours during the last 87 days of school closure thus seriously threatening the achievement of the annual target of 880 hours of instruction.”
