Thinking outside the box

MASERU – When Covid-19 hit schools, it caught everyone, including officials in the Ministry of Education by surprise.

Nobody had prepared to buy sanitizers. There was no contingency budget that had been put in place to buy protective masks. No one had even foreseen the need to install tippy-taps in schools.

Thuto Ntšekhe Mokhehle, the Chief Education Officer responsible for pre-primary and primary education, says when Covid hit, their biggest challenge was mobilising resources to fight the pandemic.

But thanks to funding which they received from the Global Partnership in Education (GPE), they were able to “utilise the funding to buy material to supply schools to ensure a safe re-opening”.

“We had two major sponsors, we had support from the government of Lesotho and support under GPE through the World Bank and UNICEF,” she says.

“We bought some water tanks which were delivered to schools to support the washing of hands which was necessary during Covid,” she says. “The government was able to supply water tanks to 800 schools.”

She said the tanks were installed directly by the government in schools.

“We were able to install hand-washing stations in the 800 schools; this was implemented through UNICEF, with the GPE supporting this part of the endeavour.”

She says with funding from the government of Lesotho, UNICEF and GPE they were able to supply 2 058 schools, from pre-primary, primary and secondary schools with a protection kit. That kit included hand-washing soap, sanitizer, disinfectants and masks.

Mokhehle says the ministry also produced an operational guideline to contain and manage Covid-19 in schools.

“We trained focal persons from each school, with assistance from the Ministry of Health. We were training the teachers to become Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) focal persons. We were able to train at least one teacher in 90 percent of the schools in all 10 districts, primary and secondary schools.

“Those that were trained were supposed to share their knowledge with their community and those schools that were not trained,” she says.

“We also produced operating guidelines for schools, for boarding facilities and hostels.

The guidelines, which were about 20 pages long, informed teachers of areas that needed to be supported, like how to manage children who were coming into school grounds, what needed to be done, how to operate the hand-washing machines and how to deal with children when they got infected.”

The ministry also produced posters for display in classrooms.

“We had posters on how to wash hands, demonstrating all that. We also provided guidance on how the shift system would work,” she says.

The ministry also produced “an accelerated teaching and learning package through the National Curriculum Development Centre

“This accelerated teaching and learning compressed the syllabus. There was also provision for training on psycho-social support and operating guidelines. We also produced learner packs. These children had been out of school for too long and we had to provide them with materials they could use for themselves when they were home,” she says.

The ministry says it also produced revision booklets and teacher guides for the compressed curriculum.

While Covid-19 presented its own set of unique challenges, it also gave education officials a chance to think outside the box in the case of new emergencies.

“The shifts meant a lot of work for the teachers. We have now learnt that there is a need for assistant teachers in our schools. We now have assistant teachers who are assisting with catch-up. We are suffering from the after-effects of the closures.”

Mokhehle says they are deeply grateful for the support they received from their development partners and the government of Lesotho to get schools working again.

“We don’t know how we would have survived without their help,” she says.

Staff Reporter