The Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, Kofi Asare, has said teachers need training in managing COVID-19 cases in secondary schools as restrictions on school activities will be eased from June 5.

According to him, teachers also needed to be trained in providing psycho-social supports to students who may have contracted the disease, as well as managing stigma attached to contracting the virus.

He told Francis Abban on the Morning Starr Monday that his organisation has incorporated these recommendations in their letter to government on how to manage a COVID-19 secondary school environment.

“Managing a COVID secondary school environment means that a teacher is the one who has custody of the children and for that matter needs to be trained on how to manage any possible case of Covid-19.

“Any child who may have had COVID, the teacher would have to provide psycho-social support to the student. And giving the stigma attached to this, most students will be jittery and they may not have the right frame of mind to learn. The teachers will have to be giving psycho-social support to students. So, you need to train the teachers in all these,” he said.

Mr Asare also noted further that teachers needed to be trained “on how to teach in a socially distant class such that movements are restricted, such that the teachers are wearing their PPEs and deployment of laser thermometers in schools.”

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on Sunday, May 31 announced that churches and students will resume this month for final year students as part of measures to ease the restrictions introduced to slow the spread of the deadly COVID-19.

Effective June 5, 2020, Churches can reopen with a maximum of 100 people under effective social distancing rules. Churches and Mosques must also not spend more than 1 hour during a service.