Policy brief

Limiting the spread of COVID-19 amongst Ghanaian students

Guidelines for the Ghana Ministry of Education ahead of reopening schools

15 May 2020

As part of its response to combat COVID-19, Ghana’s Ministry of Education (MoE) temporarily shut down its schools. To reopen schools, effective guidelines to protect students, staff, parents, and the larger society against COVID-19 spread must be developed and implemented. This note describes recommendations MoE should consider as they look to reopen schools and review related initiatives in other countries.

Dnshitobu, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Recommendations

Overarching strategies

Issue national and subnational health guidelines to ensure students and staff safety.
Prepare critical financing plans to cover the additional costs that schools will face to ensure preparedness.
Assess school WASH infrastructure readiness and availability of hygiene resources in schools.
Establish an effective communication and coordination mechanism to build trust and consensus.
Ensure continuity of learning, especially for vulnerable populations.
Build system resilience.
Develop robust health monitoring systems to ensure the timely identification of resurgence of community transmission.

Additional considerations

The decision to reopen schools should depend on the compliance of robust infrastructure and health and sanitation protocols that could contain the spread of COVID-19. Unless these measures are effectively implemented, we would advise a lot of caution in the decision to proceed with school reopening.
Authorities should allow for experimentation of different strategies to develop a more nuanced understanding of the most effective and feasible measures.