Museveni: Parents are asking me to cancel academic year 2020

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President Yoweri Museveni has claimed that parents are secretly asking him to not only keep schools and others institutions closed but also cancel the academic year 2020

Mr Museveni while  officiating at the National Heroes Day Celebrations 2020 on Tuesday June 9 at the State House in Entebbe said most parents prefer schools and other institutions of learning to remain closed and the academic year 2020 cancelled over coronavirus fears.

“Many of the parents do not want the schools to reopen, they have been calling me,” he said.  “One old lady told me to make it a dead year provided the children are safe.”

Last week President Museveni postponed the opening of schools for finalists and candidate which was scheduled for June 4 for one month.

“The School going candidates /finalists total to a number of 1.4m and government doesn’t have the resources to test the numbers for COVID19 every 2 weeks, in addition , day schoolers, school workers and teachers are still high risk because they oscillate between home and the school premises,” he said.

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“We have decided to postpone the re-opening of schools for candidate leaners as we prepare more and study the situation,” the president said, adding that “two television sets per village equals to 140,000 TV sets” for the entire country”.

Uganda is planning to send 140,000 television sets to villages across the country so that out of school children can carry on studying through televised lessons.

Many African countries were quick to close down their borders, markets, churchs and schools when the coronavirus pandemic started to take hold. While others are contemplating cancelling academic year 2020.

But after two months of grinding lockdown, governments are feeling the pinch and are looking for a way to get things back to normal.

Uganda closed all its schools and universities on March 20 and originally floated the idea of sending children back to school on June 4.

Uganda of 43m people has 507 confirmed coronavirus cases and no reported deaths.

FULL LIST: Ministry of Education releases timetable for radio, television teaching

However, after a surge of new cases in the recent days, President Museveni said the schools would have to remain closed.

In response, he outlined a bold plan to send thousands of TVs to all corners of the country to help children who were going to face key exams (candidate classes).

“We have 1.4 million children in these candidate classes and finalists. We don’t have enough testing kits for testing those numbers every two weeks,” President Museveni said during a televised speech late on Monday.

“Two television sets per village equals to 140,000 Television sets in the country.”

However, it is not yet clear how he will acquire so many Television so quickly.