Some 800 schools are ready for the resumption of Primary 4, 5 and 6, and special school, classes from May 12.

Education & Manpower Bureau Principal Education Officer Sin Chow Dick-yee called on parents to play their part in class resumptions by taking their children's temperature daily and making sure that they are in good health before sending them to school.

Parents should also provide their children with facemasks and tissues.

Cleanliness is godliness: Classrooms will have a paper towel dispenser; and health inspectors are checking school hygiene conditions.

To help primary, special school and kindergartens follow suit in stages, the bureau has made every effort to convey anti-SARS messages to school staff, parents and students through various channels ranging from guidelines, posters and leaflets to the media and the Internet.

Schools have also been provided with facemasks, ear thermometers and probe covers.

Meanwhile, with the concerted efforts of Government departments, schools, teachers, students, parents and the community at large to guard against SARS, secondary school classes have resumed over the past two weeks.

As part of a Hong Kong-wide operation prior to class resumption, a health inspector from the Food & Environmental Hygiene Department today visited a Chai Wan school to inspect its hygiene standards and offer professional advice.

"We have stepped up cleansing and disinfection measures. The whole school campus is cleansed thoroughly on a daily basis and lavatories, in particular, will be sanitised with antiseptic spray every two hours," the headmaster, So Wai-ming, said.

The school has provided each classroom with a paper towel dispenser and each keyboard in the computer room now has a plastic cover to facilitate frequent disinfection.

To encourage students to wash their hands more frequently, the school has installed additional hand-washing facilities and will extend each recess to 20 minutes.

The whole-day school will also adjust its timetable, with academic subjects taught in the morning, and multiple-intelligence and remedial teaching activities in the afternoon.

This is to allow parents and students the flexibility to decide whether to have their own lunch boxes at school and to take part in the afternoon activities. The daily school assembly will be held online.

For Primary 3 and below, schools for the mentally handicapped, kindergartens and child care centres, classes are tentatively scheduled to resume on May 19.