The plan by Ministry of Education (MOE) to return students to regular classes during the upcoming academic year, and to modify working hours so as to enable conducting classes in two shifts, has received approval from the Education Committee in the Council of Ministers.

Approval for the plan came after the Education Committee made several amendments and recommendations to the original education plan submitted by the ministry, including modifying working hours so as to start the first session at 7.30 in the morning instead of 7am, and increase the time for students to leave and enter school between two sessions by half-an-hour instead of the earlier 10 minutes, and with the second session now scheduled to start at 11.10am.

The ministerial committee also recommended that government entities, including the Ministry of Interior and the Fire Services Sector, should coordinate their services and assist the MoE in implementing the plan, by helping school authorities to regulate traffic in front of schools at the start of the academic year.

The education committee is also reported to have stipulated that MoE should ensure that the number of students per class remains at 20 students, in both public and private sector schools. In addition, following the education committee’s recommendation, the MoE is likely to insist that students who are not immunized or have received only one dose of vaccination, submit a PCR examination certificate every week to enter schools.

Elaborating on the new regulations, Minister of Education, Dr. Ali Al-Mudhaf hinted that if the epidemiological situation improved over the coming months, the decision on schools operating in two shifts could be reconsidered and attempts would be made to return schools to regular working hours.

For his part, Minister of Health Sheikh Dr. Basel Al-Sabah stressed his keenness to increase the number of vaccinations and to ramp up the speed of the vaccination drive, while giving students and teachers the highest priority to obtain the vaccine./agenciesa