It will take creativity, innovation and resilience for school heads and teachers to absorb the more than 1.2 million Form One students next month.

The government’s move to ensure all candidates join secondary school was a noble gesture. Why should exams be used to deny many the opportunity to advance education? With the guarantee of fair selection criteria and with schools reopening in three weeks’ time, school administrators have been handed an opportunity to exercise prudence in the management of very limited resources to satisfy such a huge number of learners.

Already, the institutions were bursting at the seams having been pushed to accommodate more students than their capacity could take. This year, at least 34,800 more students are expected to join Form One compared to last year.

Innovative leaders have had to create temporary structures to accommodate the extra students. They have made eating shifts so that no learner misses meals. They have been pushed to share resources with neighbouring schools to cater for the large numbers. This is the way to go as the government sources for extra money to enable the schools to meet the extra demands.

The work force in these schools will also have to bear with extra workload. Whereas different conditions dictate the teacher-student ratio, ideally one teacher should attend to a maximum of 40 students. The new challenge these teachers have been facing is that they will be forced to attend to up to 80 or in some cases 100 learners in a classroom.

This requires dedication if the quality is to be maintained. It has been done before. When the Covid-19 pandemic was reported in the country, it was the education sector that was first hit. It took great planning and dedication for learning to resume.

It is this dedication that will see the 100 per cent transition to secondary school become a success. Indeed, worldwide more than 20 countries are yet to resume normal learning because of fear and poor preparedness.

Our teachers showed the world it can be done and the opening of schools on April 25 should not be any different. We call on the government to pull all stops to ensure the level of pressure is at its minimal. We also ask the students to help in easing the challenges with utilising the resources in schools prudently.

The country has always risen to the occasion when faced with these challenges.