HAVANA, Cuba, Nov 15 (ACN) Starting today, the streets will be full of neckerchiefs and backpacks, as more than 700,000 students from preschool to fifth grade of Primary and Special Education return to classrooms all over Cuba.
November 15: let’s note the date, because this glorious and joyful Monday will be one to remember after months of hard work to design, activate and bring to a successful conclusion the safe return to in-person learning to complete the 2020-2021 school year.
Conceived as a staggered process, the resumption of face-to-face teaching activities in General Education comes in the wake of the vaccination of Cuban children and teenagers.
Those who are back in school today received the three doses of the Cuban vaccines Abdala and Soberana 02, as scheduled, even though studies show that two doses make these groups more immune to COVID-19 than three doses do to adults.
And not only General Education schools, but also all our universities will be open as of today.
“Our students have been long away from school, but now we must see to it that they stay for as long as possible in our institutions,” Zulima Lobaina Olazábal, National Director of Primary Education at the Ministry of Education (MINED), recently said on a TV appearance. “Each center will organize the school life and arrange their schedules to guarantee the students’ presence every day. For instance, some students will come in the morning and have complementary activities in the afternoon, and vice versa.”
She stressed that observing the health protocols is of the utmost importance to maintain physical distancing both in class, during lunch break and on their way out at the end of the day. To this effect, the usual morning briefings will be replaced with 10-minute informational talks.
