The Northern Regional Directorate of the Ghana Education Service (GES), has given assurance of its preparedness on ensuring the safety of children, teaching and non-teaching staff ahead of schools reopening in January 2021.

Dr Peter Attafuah, Northern Regional Director of GES, said measures had been put in place to safely receive students back to school for the next academic year in 2021. He was speaking at a stakeholder consultative meeting, organised by School for Life (S4L), a non-governmental organisation (NGO), in Tamale.

The meeting, attended by District Directors of Education and Civil Society Organisations in Northern Region, was to ascertain the Region’s preparedness towards schools reopening and seek participants’ input on what should go into safe return of students back to the classrooms.

It was under the “Empowerment for Life” project, being implemented by a consortium of NGOs, namely; S4L, Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA), YEFL Ghana and Changing Lives in Innovative Partnerships (CLIP).

The project is being funded by CISU with support from Ghana Friends. Dr Attafuah said all schools in the Region would be disinfected and the children provided with nose masks, hand sanitisers and infra-red thermometer guns given to the schools to regularly check the temperatures of students to guarantee their safety.

He said Veronica Buckets would be stationed at vantage points on schools premises to aid hand washing hygiene protocol among students.

He noted that “back to school campaign” was being carried out by the GES to persuade pre-tertiary school children, especially girls, remain in school once schools resumed next year.

Dr Attafuah explained that the campaign was part of planned activities to ensure that no child, particularly girl, whether pregnant or nursing babies, remained at home when schools resume to full academic work in January 2021.

Mr Fuseini Abdul Rahim, Communications, Advocacy and Gender Officer at S4L, said engagements by his outfit with schools’ authorities and other relevant stakeholders revealed that strategies were in place to safely reopen schools to full academic session in January 2021.

District Directors of Education present at the event took turns to pledge their commitment to ensure children adhered strictly to the COVID-19 protocols issued by the GES and the government when they returned, to guarantee safe environment for everyone.