By Faten Omar

KUWAIT: Director of Public Relations and Educational Media at the Ministry of Education Dhedan Al-Ajmi told Kuwait Times yesterday that the ministry will take legal action against schools that are still working and forcing teachers and students to attend. Kuwait Times received complaints regarding some nurseries that are still accepting children and forcing their teachers to work. Ajmi advised those teachers to come to the education ministry or private education department to file a complaint and provide the name of the school in order to begin legal procedures.

Ajmi affirmed that for teachers who came from infected countries and are required to remain in quarantine for 14 days, the school must pay their salaries. Regarding the backup plan to make up what students missed in schools, he said that the ministry is still studying it. "We are still studying and working on a plan. It is a new situation for us," he said.

Ajmi said people can call the hotlines of the ministry of education to communicate with the educational districts depending on the school's governorate (Capital hotline: 51575591, Hawally: 51576117, Farwaniya: 51576576, Jahra: 51577055, Ahmadi: 51577655, Mubarak Al-Kabeer: 51577951, Services Administration: 51592515, Public Relations: 51594544)

Last week, Kuwait Times interviewed Manager of the Private Education Department Sanad Al-Mutairi to clarify some issues related to private schools, after many schools threatened to cut the salaries of teachers during the closure period. Mutairi said no school has the right to deduct the amount for the days of suspension from teachers' salaries, advising teachers to inform the private education department.

Meanwhile, Education Minister Saud Al-Harbi announced on Tuesday the launch of the first phase of the operational plan for the e-learning project. He stressed that the ministry of education has been working since the beginning of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus to develop mechanisms and solutions to avoid the consequences of this crisis, and one of them was the activation of the Kuwait educational portal including the educational channel and Siraj app, in addition to creating new tools and learning resources for the portal, instant feedback and online classes.

The main tasks of the implementation plan for the e-learning project are equipping the headquarters of the technology team at the ministry, converting textbooks of different levels of study into PDF format, complete the MS-TEAMS database, uploading links to the educational channel to download interactive books, providing online tests and providing technical support to all work teams.