Karnataka schools gear up to welcome students from Sept 6

The call to resume physical classes has come under significant criticism from various quarters in the state, especially by parents and guardians, who have asked the government to reconsider its decision due to the impending third wave of Covid-19 infections.

The Karnataka government on Monday said that physical classes for students of classes 6, 7 and 8 will resume from September 6 across the state in taluks or administration units where the positivity rates is below 2%.

The decision comes a week after the state government reopened classes for students of 9 and 10 which has received a good response. (PTI)

“Classes will be conducted with 50% attendance on alternative days, five days a week. During weekends, sanitization will be done,” R Ashok, Karnataka’s minister for revenue department and in-charge of Covid-19 in Bengaluru said on Monday.

The decision comes a week after the state government reopened classes for students of 9 and 10 which has received a good response in terms of attendance so far as the administration and ministers continue to encourage more students to return to attend physical classes.

Ashok said that they will continue with the current arrangements for a month and then take a call on resuming classes for students below class 5.

“We are fine with that (today’s announcement). But still we want to tell the government to please look into the recommendations made by the state task force where the main thing is literacy and numeracy have completely collapsed at primary level and something has to be thought of at this level,” Shashi Kumar, the state convenor of the Karnataka Private School Managements, Teaching and Non-Teaching Staff Coordination Committee (KPMTCC) said.

He added that the government was not looking at the earlier recommendations made by the expert committee to reopen physical classes in schools at the earliest. “Any further delay in school reopening may push children into malnutrition, child labour, child marriage, child trafficking, begging etc., making their condition worse,” the report submitted to the government on June 22 stated.

The call to resume physical classes has come under significant criticism from various quarters in the state, especially by parents and guardians, who have asked the government to reconsider its decision due to the impending third wave of Covid-19 infections.

Parents and guardians have also alleged that the decision to reopen schools are part of the ploy by private educational institution operators who will now have more reason to demand fees for the academic year despite the looming threat of another Covid-19 pandemic-induced lockdown.

There are 38,040 schools having classes 6, 7 and 8 in which over 3.1million students and 152,000 teachers, according to data shared by the primary and secondary education department.

There are 24,391 schools having classes between 1 and 5 which have over 5.4 million students and around 162,000 teachers, data shows.

The government has even stated that there has been a positive response to children wanting to return to school.

Ashok said that there were 6,472 samples taken from students attending schools and only 14 of them have tested positive so far, which he said, was a validation for the government’s initiative to resume physical classes.

The minister also said that there were 2,912 gram panchayats in the state that had zero Covid cases.

Data shared by the government stated that there have been days when the percentage of attendance in classes 9 and 10 were around 65%, which the government believes is testimony that more students want to return to schools at the earliest.

“We want to protest this decision but protests are not allowed since there is Covid, but schools are allowed,” Ganesh Poojary from the parents coordination committee told Hindustan Times on Monday.

He said that it was fine to start schools in rural areas since many children had missed classes due to lack of connectivity but said that the government could have waited to do the same in Bengaluru.

“Bengaluru is a big no no. Because the density of the city is too much and people are travelling around and we do not know where they are travelling,” he added.

Poojary said that schools are being forced to reopen to help private schools collect fees and nothing more.