Afghanistan to Reopen Schools After a Six-Month Coronavirus Delay

Afghanistan is set to reopen schools by the end of August, its education ministry said on Tuesday. The move comes after the country shut down schools and delayed the start of the academic year by six months in response to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.

Grades 11 and 12 in public schools, grades 7-12 in night schools, and grades 1-12 in private schools will resume classes starting August 21, according to the education ministry’s plan, which was approved by the Afghan cabinet on Tuesday, Afghanistan’s Khaama Press reported.

“The private schools should follow the health and safety regulations set by the [Ministry of Public Health] MOPH,” the Ministry of Education said in a statement.

Afghanistan’s government had previously said that all schools and universities would remain closed through September in an effort to curb the spread of the Chinese coronavirus. Just a handful of private Afghan universities were allowed to continue operations through online lectures during the coronavirus lockdown, according to the report. However, most Afghan students were unable to continue their education via online classes because they lacked a stable internet connection at home.

The Afghan school system, along with most of the struggling country’s public services, is notoriously unstable and a regular target of terrorist attacks. On June 18, a mortar bomb went off inside a religious school in northern Afghanistan, killing at least nine students and injuring six more.

“As per the initial investigation, the explosion was caused by a mortar that had somehow been carried inside the madrassa [Islamic religious school],” a police spokesman told Agence France-Presse (AFP) at the time, adding that most of the students who died were under the age of 18.

The incident occurred in the Ishkamish district of Afghanistan’s Takhar province. Although the religious school was located within a government-controlled area of Ishkamish, Afghanistan’s Taliban terror group controls several villages in the district, according to the report. No groups claimed responsibility for the explosion at the time.