The Minister of Basic and Secondary Education has announced plans to subsidise lost contact hours in the summer holidays.

Claudiana Ayo Cole made the announcement before lawmakers at the National Assembly.

Ms Cole said the loss of contact hours will directly affect about 674,300 students in conventional and recognised Madrasah schools.

“After this pandemic the ministry will design a way to recover the lost instructional hours. This will include the extension of school days or weeks paying attention to double shifting where it is applicable.

“Intensive and extensive classes for examination classes to recover the lost time with the option of rescheduling the examination dates,” she said.

Ms Cole said her ministry has also plans to reschedule the curriculum delivery plan and strengthen the monitoring of implementation of recovery strategy through the class monitors who visit their school regularly.

She added: “In those cases we will perhaps extend the school week to include Saturdays and in other cases even the holidays will be cut down and extend the school terms so instead of two weeks of holiday we may say one week. This is all to make up the lost contact hours.”

Reporting by Adama Makasuba