Educationist Professor Stephen Adei has said that government should not be in a rush to open schools to students while the country is still fighting the coronavirus.

According to him, final year students alone could be asked to go to school to limit the spread of the virus among students.

He said on Prime Morning, on Joy Prime, that the health of these final year students can easily be monitored as compared to having a huge number of students across campuses.

“I think we should not rush with the non-final year students. For me, if they have to start the next academic year in January we can handle it, we must make sure that we don’t add the two, so that we can take the time to consider the final year students only, for now,” he told Daniel Dadzie, host of the show.

Prof Adei added that these final year students may not have to stay in school for long. He stated that many of them had a few weeks till they were done with school.

He said that having to focus on them will also give schools and government needed time to access the situation and prepare for allowing all students to return.

“Those with Cambridge exams had about six weeks and WASSCE students had about eight weeks to complete, so we must not rush to open the whole school,” he added.

Prof Adei said that schools can have a classroom or facility set aside as an isolation centre when needed.

Also on the show, Research Fellow at the University of Cape Coast's Centre for Gender Research, Advocacy and Documentation, Amanda Odoi, supported Prof Adei’s idea.

She said that universities can take advantage of the numerous halls and group students into the coronavirus hotspots for easier monitoring and identification.

“When they come back to campus you make sure they are all in the halls and it takes averagely two weeks for them to write exams,” she added.

Prof Adei supported the call by Founder and President of Ashesi University to have the disrupted school year cancelled to give the country more time to fix the needed gabs in the school system for reopening.