The phased re-opening of schools in South Africa was supposed to start today for grades 7 and 12 , but as it became clear that many schools were not ready to reopen with new Covid-19 safety measures in place, the official reopening has been delayed to next week on the 8^th of June. Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said this morning that the coming weeks should be used to "mop up" those schools that are not ready. Provinces that have been identified as ready were the Western Cape and Gauteng, with the Free State, North West, Eastern Cape and Northern Cape at medium readiness and the Limpopo, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal regarded to be at high risk and low level of readiness. The issues that prevented some schools from starting the phased reopening was a lack of personal protective equipment and the induction of pupils, teachers and support staff that have not taken place. Many countries are grappling with the issue of how to safely bring children back to the classroom. The Wall Street Journal has investigated whether it was safe to reopen schools and report that there are a number of countries that have reported no spikes in Covid-19 cases after they re-opened their schools, which is seen as "an encouraging sign for authorities around the world."  – Linda van Tilburg

Is it safe to reopen schools? These countries say yes

By Bojan Pancevski in Berlin and Naja Dandanell in Copenhagen

A number of countries that have reopened schools in the past two months have reported no resulting increase in coronavirus infection rates, an encouraging sign for authorities around the world that are contemplating how and when to safely bring children back to the classroom.

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