MUTEGI: Reopening of schools is a no-no for now, till Covid-19 is defeated

For at least two months, no Cabinet secretary has flown to Mombasa for an urgent official function. MPs have not travelled to posh hotels in Naivasha or Coast for “critical” parliamentary committee retreats. MCAs are stuck in the village with the ‘irritating lot’ who voted for them. Dubai and Singapore benchmarking tours are no longer county assembly items.

Had Covid-19 stopped there, no serious Kenyan would really mind. Unfortunately, the dumb thing has proceeded to stop our children from going to school, making it the most morbid monster to attack our society in living memory.

Managing defeat has proved the most treacherous manoeuvre for the human race. History shows that characters like Napoleon and Muammar Gaddafi recorded victories against great odds but, when defeat came calling, they lost the patience to describe the challenge at hand and generate adequate information to manage it to their best advantage.

It is, therefore, safe to posit that any time a phenomenon threatens humanity, the prudent thing is to first describe it and then use the knowledge to explain its manifestations, hence deriving the strategies to contain, manage or, better still, eliminate it. Time and resources to empirically observe it using scientifically attested methodology is an imperative, not a luxury.

Covid-19 is globally about five months old. In Kenya, the sample population tested is so low that the shape and size of the threat is essentially unknown. No country has claimed adequate scientific study to effectively manage Covid-19 — unless you choose to believe in Madagascar. No reputable scientist or institution has described it to a level of accuracy from which we can derive effective methods to manage its worst possible effects.

Nobody knows the extent of its medium- and long-term effects on the overall health of those infected after they test negative, including reinfection rates. Luckily, the world is seized of this reality, hence, policy, and not resources, might be countries’ biggest challenge.

In Kenya, we know virtually nothing about this virus, making policy decisions a tricky affair. That is why we have been quarantining people to keep the virus at bay. This brings me to the question of the day: Reopening of learning institutions.

By any standards, Kenya believes in education and this is a great virtue. When this belief manifests itself in mass production of graduates through any means, including rampant cheating in exams, it turns into a vice. That is why I voice my strong opposition to reopening of schools at this point in time.

Maybe if we took the gamble and reopened the schools today, nothing monumental would happen. But gambling with masses of citizens is not an option for a responsible government. This is not the time for popular decisions. Public demand must sit and wait for science.

Enrolment in pre-primary, primary and secondary schools is estimated at 3.2 million, eight million and 7.1 million, respectively. Taking primary schools as the frame of reference, 95 per cent, or 7.6 million, are day scholars.

If an average class has 40 pupils, and one of them tested positive, it will require Health CS Mutahi Kagwe to quarantine all the pupils and their parents, siblings, teachers and, in some cases, neighbours.

I don’t want to imagine the psychosocial impact on the hundreds of families who will be sitting quarantined without any way of telling who among them will come out alive, but somebody might want to tell me where such facilities are located.

Reopening schools today is akin to jumping into a crocodile-infested pool and hoping that the reptiles will behave.

Education CS George Magoha should grab this opportunity to come up with sustainable solutions to the complex issues bedeviling the sector.

Whereas completing school and sitting exams on time is important, it is not an emergency. We know plenty of our age mates who completed primary at 16 or even 20 and became acclaimed professionals.

Dr Mutegi, an educational management and policy expert, is a lecturer at Kenyatta University.