Indonesia to reopen schools next year amid COVID-19 pandemic

JAKARTA, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) -- Students in Indonesia are expected to resume school as of January 2021 amid the lingering COVID-19 pandemic. 

Indonesian Education and Culture Minister Nadiem Makarim said the school reopening is based on the level of risk of COVID-19 spread, the schools' readiness, and the orderly health protocols. 

Every student or teacher coming to school has to wear mask when he or she has a temperature of fewer than 38 centigrade, and wash hands with soaps frequently. 

Students would take turns coming to school, as 50 percent of them would be allowed in the class to maintain the distance protocol, while the rest would learn at home. 

Specifically, each class for early childhood education and the disabled only accommodates a maximum of five students. 

Learning activities proceed without sport exercises and extracurricular activities, while school canteens are closed. 

Makarim said that the reopening of schools should be based on the approval of the local administrations, school principals, and parents. 

"If the three parties agree, it means face-to-face schools can begin to be implemented," Makarim said last week. 

Schools would map students and employees who have comorbidities, those who do not have safe access to transportation, and those who have histories of travels from high-risk areas. Health Minister Terawan Agus Putranto said health protocols to prevent transmission of cases are most important. "

Wearing a mask, keeping physical distancing, and washing hands are an adaptation to a new normal that must be applied with high discipline," he said. 

Putranto also said there are supports from community health centers in every sub-district to ensure health services for every student. 

Meanwhile, Home Affairs Minister Tito Karnavian underlined the importance of checking COVID-19 transmission outside school buildings. 

The Indonesian Teachers Association (PGRI) supports the reopening of schools, but suggests that the implementation cannot be fully left to the local governments. 

The central government needs to formulate an emergency curriculum, the association's General Chairperson Unifah Rosyidi said. 

"The government needs to simplify the curriculum because during pandemic learning activities, it cannot be carried out with a normal duration," added Rosyidi. 

The Indonesian Commission for the Protection of Children (KPAI) emphasized that the government needs to ensure that children should be protected from COVID-19 and schools should not become new clusters of transmission. "

There must be well-planned information, communication, coordination, and complaint systems so that the central and local governments can work together to prepare the reopening of schools," the KPAI's Commissioner Retno Listyarti said. 

The Jakarta Education Office is currently reviewing which schools are ready to operate in January 2021. 

The office's head Nahdiana said they need to prepare school sanitation and hygiene facilities, in addition to ensuring that they apply the rule on wearing masks, maintaining physical distance, and washing hands. 

"The most important thing is that children must be healthy before they learn," Nahdiana added. 

Australia's Griffith University's Epidemiologist Dicky Budiman said the government should maximize case-control first for about three months, and the result can be used to make decisions to reopen schools. 

Budiman explained that there are three criteria for reopening schools, namely the decline in daily cases for two consecutive weeks, the trend of decreasing cases with a positivity rate below 5 percent, and a single-digit daily death rate from COVID-19. Currently, Indonesia's positivity rate is still above 10 percent. 

*http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-11/29/c_139551417.htm