THE Education Ministry is committed to continuing with the school session as it is confident that the standard operating procedure (SOP) implemented in schools can curb the spread of Covid-19, said Education Minister Radzi Jidin.

He said the data available showed that schools were safe to attend and not the cause of Covid-19 clusters.

The latest data from the Health Ministry showed that, of the 99 education clusters, 52 involved public schools with 2,274 cases, he said.

“This is 4.8% of the clusters or 2.07% of cluster cases.

“Of these cases, 1.42% or 1,559 cases involved residential schools and only 0.53% or 585 cases involved non-boarding schools, not even 1%,” he told a press conference in Putrajaya today.

The ministry previously said that 60.8% of Covid-19 cases in Malaysia were sporadic cases and 39.2% involved clusters.

“If we look at the 60.8%, in this context, the kids are exposed to Covid-19 anywhere, but students are in a controlled environment in schools because of the set SOP. We’re not saying we’re perfect, but we will do our best to keep infections to a minimum with the SOP,” he added.

Radzi said the authorities would step up measures for SOP compliance in hostels, including through a task force.

However, schools would be closed on the instruction of the National Security Council (MKN) if the situation worsened, he said.

He said under the current SOP, schools with positive cases would be closed for two days, and the district health office would make a risk assessment to decide if the closure needs to be extended.

This is also to enable the office to conduct close contact tracing and to monitor sanitisation and disinfection.

Radzi said schools in red zones would not be closed except if they were under the enhanced movement control order (EMCO), but state governments can discuss with the Ministry of Education if risk assessment carried out by the Ministry of Health required schools in certain localities to be temporarily shut.

He said attendance in schools between March 1 and April 23 was 90.26%, which was high.

Radzi said checks on the ground showed that children were excited to attend school and parents were also keen to send them to school.

Although it might be easy to close schools at this moment, it might not be the right move, he added.

“It may be easy to take this route (closing schools), but let’s do the right thing. Would closing schools be the right decision (now)? We need to decide based on data and analysis,” he said. – Bernama, April 26, 2021.