Almost 3 months after the schools in Odisha were closed due to the second wave of Covid pandemic, the state government on Saturday decided to reopen schools for class 10 and 12 students from July 26.
School and mass education department secretary Satyabrata Sahu said that the decision to reopen schools and resume physical mode of teaching for class 10 and 12 students was taken keeping in mind the problems faced by students in online teaching mode due to poor mobile (internet) connectivity.
“We have been able to reach out to 40% of the students via online teaching while the remaining 60% are yet to be connected. These students have lost 150 days of regular teaching days. As both the Board of Secondary Education and Council of Higher Secondary Education have reduced syllabus, resumption of physical teaching in classrooms has become a necessity,” said Sahu.
He said the department will issue a comprehensive standard operating procedure (SOP) to schools for the reopening.
Prior to reopening, all school teachers will be vaccinated on priority and the district education officers (DEOs) have been instructed to ensure that all the Covid-19 protocols are strictly followed.
{{/usCountry}}Prior to reopening, all school teachers will be vaccinated on priority and the district education officers (DEOs) have been instructed to ensure that all the Covid-19 protocols are strictly followed.
{{/usCountry}}“We have given an option to students to come to school with consent from their parents. Keeping in mind the safety of the students, the decision on reopening of schools will be taken by the respective district collectors. The offline classes for standard 10 and 12 students will be held between 10 am and 1: 30 pm with no lunch break. The schools will remain closed on Sundays and on all state government holidays,” said Sahu.
Last month, the Odisha government kicked off YouTube live streaming of classes for students in standard 1-8 in 8 districts and standard 9-10 in all the 30 districts. While Odia, English, history, geography, Hindi and Sanskrit classes were held three times a week, science and mathematics classes were telecast twice a week for class 10 students.
Sahu said nearly one million students of class 10 and 12 from the state were preparing for various competitive exams and losing out on learning due to lack of mobile connectivity.
Odisha shut down all the schools on April 19 after Covid-19 cases started rising and cancelled class 10 and 12 board exams while promoting the students of class 9 and 11 without examinations.
Lockdowns of varying degrees are in place in Odisha’s 30 districts till August 1 with weekend shutdown in 10 districts that have more than 5% Test Positivity Rate (TPR)-- percentage of positive samples among those tested in a specific period. On Saturday, the state reported 2,182 cases with TPR of 2.94%.
So far states such as Gujarat, Bihar, Chandigarh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Uttarakhand and union territory of Chandigarh have either reopened the state-run schools or are in the process.
Meanwhile, the Odisha government has asked all its employees to start coming to office immediately. The general administrative (GA) department said since most of the employees are now fully vaccinated they were required mandatorily to attend office regularly.
“Employees who are neither vaccinated nor exempted will not be permitted to attend office and their absence will be treated as wilful,” the department said in an order.