Education Ministry urged to let Sabah schools decide whether to do physical or online classes

KOTA KINABALU: The Education Ministry has been urged to consider letting respective schools decide on their own whether to hold physical classes or conduct home-based learning and teaching (PdPR).

Kota Kinabalu MP Chan Foong Hin suggested the delegation of power as each area faced its own challenges in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic and Internet connectivity.

“Many schools here are now facing extremely low student attendance rates, and there are even classes where only a single student has attended the physical class.

“In Sabah, as high as 82% of the clusters had originated from schools and when compared with the vaccination rate of children aged five to 12 years old in Sabah is less than 10%, these data have caused many parents to worry about the risks.

“As a result, these parents have instead opted to disallow their children to attend class ... When everyone is worried about Covid-19 and there is only one student in the whole class in school in cities such as Kota Kinabalu, having physical classes is equivalent to nothing and is meaningless,” he explained in a statement on Friday (Feb 25).

However, Chan said some quarters pointed out that more than half (52%) of primary and secondary school students in Sabah lack internet access and devices for home learning, especially in the rural areas, and that was perhaps the main reason why the ministry had insisted on physical classes.

“In view of the digital divide between urban and rural areas, and the disparity in the number of students in urban and rural schools, it is difficult to implement a one-size-fits-all policy for all schools to attend classes or for all schools to carry out PdPR.

“They should instead remove all red tapes required for schools to conduct PdPR and delegate such decision-making powers to the schools.

“Let the principal of the school, together with the stakeholders in the Parents and Teachers’ Association (PTA), make decisions for each school on their own. Only the school management itself understands the actual situation best,” he stressed.

Chan also proposed that all school-going children should be protected with vaccines first before all can agree to fully restart physical classes, or else the same issue of virus spread and school closures will reoccur.