54% parents won’t send kids to school for a month after lockdown is lifted: Survey

Nearly 54% parents from the city, who participated in the nationwide survey, said that they would not send their children to schools at least for a month after it re-opens and would first monitor the situation in the wake of Covid-19 outbreak. Nearly 24% parents said that they would not prefer sending their children to school at least for the next six months.

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The results are part of a nationwide survey conducted by ParentCircle, an online parenting platform with over 12,000 responses from parents across the country. The results revealed that parents are extremely anxious about sending their children to school even as governments across the country are hoping to resume schools from June-July. “Parents would not want to take any risk by sending their children to school even if there are a handful of active cases. Governments need to come up with an annual strategy to cope with this,” said Sandhya Rasal, a parent from Kandivli.

Parents were also asked as to when they would be comfortable in sending their children for outdoor sports, birthday parties and other gatherings. Over 43% parents from the city said that they would not send their children for any sports activities at least for the next six months. The same number of parents said that they won’t make any visit to malls or movies for the entire remaining year.

“An overwhelming majority of parents are worried and unsure. They are anxious and not ready to take any chances. Parents need assurance that their children will be safe in school, group activities and other public places. The onus is on schools and other public places to ensure that safety measures and physical distancing policies are in place before they open up for activities,” said Nalina Ramalakshmi, founder and managing director, ParentCircle.

In Maharashtra, the state education department conducted a series of meetings last week to decide on a possible reopening strategy. “It is evident that one uniform policy for reopening won’t work and we would have to decide depending on the local situation. We are also working on possible solutions in case of late re-opening like reduction in the syllabus, online learning in the interim, etc,” said an official from the state education department.