Confronting COVID-19 Whilst Elementary School Students Resume In-Person Learning

Resuming in-person teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic implies that schools must deploy strategies to enforce adherence to the safety protocols to help contain and reduce the spread of the corona virus disease amongst school children. Thus, the current qualitative study adopted a case study design to explore strategies that were deployed to enforce adherence to the COVID-19 safety protocols among elementary school students. A semi-structured interview guide was used to gather data from 30 teachers enrolled in a one-year master’s degree in Educational Leadership and Management program at a public university in Ghana. The study showed that strict compulsory handwashing before entering the school was deployed to ensure adherence to handwashing safety protocol and provision of veronica buckets. Also, interventions that were deployed to enforce social distancing were spacing of desk, having mealtime in class, eating meals in turns, suspension of assembly and other social gatherings, split class for shift system. Additionally, schools enured students wore nose masks by providing nose masks to students who could not afford.