Don’t expect long vacation when schools reopen, Cross River tells students

The Cross River government says students in the state should not expect the usual long vacation when schools reopen.

Godwin Amanke, commissioner for quality education, disclosed this in an interview with NAN on Wednesday.

According to him, before the closure of schools due to the COVID-19 outbreak, 70 percent of schools in the state had conducted second term examination.

Amanke, however, said those schools that were not able to round off examinations would continue when schools reopen.

He added that immediately examinations are concluded, the third term would commence and run through the weeks that students are supposed to be on long vacation.

On if a date had been set for schools to reopen, he said it was not a one-man or state affair because Cross River was not isolated from other states.

“We cannot talk about reopening schools at the moment because Cross River is not in isolation but in relation with other states and the federal government,” he said.

“So, other stakeholders like the federal ministry of education, health and presidential task force (PTF) on COVID-19 will have to be involved.

“The state ministries of education run with the policies, curriculum and syllabus as directed by the federal ministry of education.

“Ordinarily, we would have said schools should reopen in the state because we have no case of COVID-19, but that won’t be in tandem with the federal government’s policy on ground in relationship to COVID-19.”

He, however, urged students to take advantage of the state’s digital learning initiative and the school-on-radio programmes to learn at home.

According to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Cross River is the only state in Nigeria that has not recorded any case of COVID-19.