The Lagos State Government has begun work on putting measures to protect pupils when the Federal Government reopen school nationwide.

WuzupNigeria reports that the President, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari [retd], had announced the closure of schools to curtail the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking at the annual ministerial press briefing of the state Ministry of Education on Tuesday, the Lagos State Commissioner for Education, Folasade Adefisayo, said although it was the FG that would decide when the schools, the state was putting in place measures to protect the pupils when the schools reopen.

She said,

“It is the Federal Government that will open the schools as they were the ones that closed the schools. Recall that the Presidential Taskforce on COVID-19 on Monday said schools remain closed.

“I can’t give you a date when schools will resume in Lagos, but we are working with development partners, ministries of Education across the country to come up with series of protocols on how we will be able to manage when we open schools.

“So, we are working behind the scene, we have a paper on the protocols and we will start to share as the paper is finally approved in a few days.

“There must be protocols that will address schools with large gatherings.

“There are many things we are thinking of, we are thinking about pupils not coming to school every day so that we will be able to spread the children across the whole school.

“Pupils don’t have to be in their class to learn, they can learn in a room with tables and chairs.”

Adefisayo added that a total of 3000 primary and secondary school teachers were recently absorbed into the teaching workforce of the Lagos State in a bid to boost the capacity of the existing workforce thereby providing quality education.

The Commissioner also pointed out that the Ministry had embarked on the construction and upgrading of Public Schools’ infrastructure across the state with the completion of six blocks of 92 classrooms in primary schools and three blocks of 54 classrooms in secondary schools in the state.