Covid-19: Non-exam year students to do home-based learning after hols instead of returning hostel, says Radzi

PETALING JAYA: Non-exam year students who returned home for the Chinese New Year holidays will not be allowed back to their boarding schools.

Education Minister Datuk Dr Radzi Jidin said the ministry had decided these students would be continuing home-based learning for the time being.

"This is because we want to ensure that our children who will be sitting for the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examinations in February and March will be in a safe environment," he said in a video on his Facebook page on Saturday (Feb 5).

Radzi said that the standard operating procedures (SOPs) in boarding schools were quite tight.

The ministry would ensure that enforcement of these SOPs would be improved, he added.

At the same time, he said the ministry had increased its monitoring in schools to ensure that all SOPs are properly complied with to reduce the risk of spreading Covid-19 in schools.

He also asked parents to keep their children at home if they showed Covid-19 symptoms instead of sending them to school when it reopened next week.

"This is important for us to ensure that the school environment is safe and we can reduce the risk of infection in schools," he added.

Radzi also said based on Health Ministry data, only about 7% (8,451 cases) of the 118,238 Covid-19 cases recorded from Jan 1 to Feb 1 were education clusters.

Radzi added out of the 303 Covid-19 clusters detected between those dates, a third were from education institutions under his ministry, totalling 100, 86 (28.38%) were from other education institutions not registered under the Education Ministry.

Out of the 100 clusters, 84 were detected in boarding schools under the ministry, amounting to 4,767 cases.

This, he added, was about 4% of the total Covid-19 cases recorded from Jan 1 to Feb 1.