'Turkey quarantines 1,000 classrooms every day'

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Interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic for one year and a half, in-class education started in Turkey on September 6 without reducing course hours.

While no schools have been shut down due to the virus in the past two months, the number of Covid patents and contacts among students and teachers were over 10,000 in September alone, according to trade unions.

With nearly 30,000 daily new cases and 200 deaths on average recently, eyes have turned towards the schools again.

Prof. Alper Şener, a member of the Ministry of Health Scientific Advisory Board, said last week that suspending face-to-face education may be considered if daily cases jump to 60 or 70 thousand again.

However, he was quickly refuted by Minister of Health Fahrettin Koca, who said closing schools was not on the agenda of the science board.

A member of the Eğitim-İş Union Central Executive Committee, Orhan Yıldırım, spoke to bianet about the latest situation at schools, closed classrooms and how the Covid measures are implemented.

"More classrooms are closed every day"

"They don't close schools, but new classrooms are closed to education every day," said Yıldırım. "For a classroom to be closed, at least two people should get Covid at the same time.

"We express the number of closed classes per day in thousands. Every day, some classes are closed while some classes reopen. So, about 1,000 classrooms are quarantined every day."

"Ten percent of teachers have Covid"

While the Ministry of National Education does not release Covid infection data at schools, the infection rate among teachers are quite high, according to the information they obtained, said Yıldırım.

"We can say that 10 percent of the teachers are Covid positive or contacts. We talk about a number about 100,000 and this is the weekly number," he noted.

"We learn these numbers from the number of idle classes of hall monitors and our members at schools. The Ministry of National Education does not disclose figures.

"It doesn't send teachers who had contact [with Covid patients] home as well. In fact, if one teacher in a school has Covid, all teachers should be considered contacts. However, they don't implement this but just send the Covid-positive one home.

"They don't consider [the students] in a classroom whose teacher is Covid-positive, either, and this causes the [Covid] numbers to appear lower.

Covid measures are not as strictly implemented as they were at the start of the school year, Yıldırım noted, adding that they have observed a lack of hygiene and disinfectant supplies

The economy

The government's decision to keep schools open was related to the country's economic situation, Yıldırım asserted.

"Same policies are implemented in places where cases are low and vaccination is high; we don't find this right. We also don't find right the schools to stay open in places with high risk of infection and low vaccination rates.

"Turkey's economy has entered an irreversible period. This is why they can't close the schools. If the economy wasn't bad, the students' needs for tablets, computers and internet could have been met. But there is no economy to achieve that. They can't meet the needs of 18 million students."

Millions couldn't access education

Also talking about Minister Mahmut Özer's statement that four million students fell behind education, Yıldırm said, "The minister of national education doesn't express it correctly. All students fell behind during the pandemic, about four and a half million students could not have education at all." (RT/VK)