Photo / Cubadebate

By Roberto Morejón

With a message of confidence, especially to parents, Cuba restarted the on-site school year, only in higher years, after an agitated period due to the COVID-19 and the cessation of activities in the schools.

Only as a result of the progress in the vaccination of adolescents and young people with three autochthonous biologicals, has it been possible for the Ministry of Education to authorize the staggered reopening of the school year, in person.

The students of the 12th grade of pre-university, the third year of Technical and Professional Education and the last two years of Pedagogical Training, had to inaugurate the new stage, without abandoning hygienic-sanitary dispositions.

Of course, parents, teachers and the media explain that the pandemic has come to an end, but that it is possible to return gradually to the classrooms under favorable circumstances.

This is so because the inoculation progressed with the injectables, Abdala and Soberana, of proven efficacy in pediatric ages, with remarkable immune responses, and also the cases of COVID-19 and deaths decreased.

In addition to the safety of the vaccines, the personnel in charge of the schools will maintain cleaning tasks in classrooms, with distancing between tables and seats, and in the rest of the classrooms.

Since a little less than 85 thousand schoolchildren, that is, almost 5 percent of the Cuban enrollment, resumed on-site classes, it will be easier to take advantage of educational spaces.   

For students, this means a partial break with the prolonged confinement due to SARS-Cov-2 and maximum attention to subjects whose programs have been adapted.

Teachers will have to reinforce the personalized supervision of students with more difficulties after the long period away from school.

Those enrolled in the final grade of high school will have a particular challenge, because in the following 20 weeks of classes it is important to ensure their adequate preparation to face the entrance exams to Higher Education.

Thus, in connection with the progress of vaccination, a procedure that in its three doses has reached 46 percent of the population, Cuba is successively sending schoolchildren back to classes, without abandoning unavoidable hygienic-sanitary regulations.