Former Education Minister, Betty Mould-Iddrisu says students are safer at home under parental guidance than in schools

She said at home, their parents or guardians can ensure they follow the safety protocols set by the health authorities.

She explained that even though schools may offer a closed environment that suggests staff can manage a COVID-19 outbreak in schools due to the smaller population numbers involved, the alternative may be the better option.

She believes that safety protocols such as social distancing cannot be enforced in schools as well as, if the students were home with their guardians.

“I’m not the current Education Minister but just being a mother, and a grandmother, I will tell you that government's first duty is towards the safety of the children of the schools,” she said on the Super Morning Show, Tuesday.

“The risk in contracting the virus out of school is far less because not all the children are 18 and even if you are 18, and your father and mother have the primary control over you, he or she can ensure that you actually obey social distancing rules,” she stressed.

Noting what the World Health Organisation has put out for guidelines, she shared that schools are incapable of practising the basic protocols they have set.

“Social distancing means staying a number of metres away from each other and wearing face masks. Have you seen this practised in any of the schools? Indeed can they practice it?” she said.

“This is the question that is haunting the UK and the USA where they even have far more advanced means of teaching the students so they are able to do online.”

Since the reopening of schools for final year students, 55 people from Accra Girls Senior High School have tested positive for COVID-19.

Parents of Accra Girls SHS and other schools have since been worried about the situation.

Mould-Iddrisu explained that social distancing is the bedrock management of COVID-19. So any argument that puts several hundred children into compounds cannot be the answer to the problem.

She therefore appealed to the President and the Minister for Education, Matthew Opoku-Prempeh to recall the students home instead of keeping them in school while the confirmed cases have increased.