Gurugram, Delhi schools reopen to near empty classrooms
It is 8.35 am and the rain has flooded the roads leading to Amity International School in Sector 46, Gurugram. The staff checks the register as a guard fills up a sanitiser dispenser. The school is reopening after a long gap and they want to ensure all protocols are followed. A short while later, a Class XII student steps out of a red Maruti Suzuki Swift, and the delighted staff welcomes her warmly. School has finally begun. “At last somebody’s arrived,” says a staff member as the student sanitises her hands. “Now we are hopeful that others will come, too.” Sure enough, two more students arrive shortly.
For 10-year-old Kalpana Yadav, classroom learning, however, still remains elusive. On September 1, as the Haryana government decided to reopen schools for Classes 4 and 5 — they’d reopened for Classes 6 and above on July 16 — the Class 4 student of Amity International School was hopeful life would return to normal. “I am longing to meet my friends in school, but I am also afraid of getting sick. Everyone in my family is vaccinated, except for my younger brother and I,” says Yadav. And so her parents did not send her to school today. In fact, no student below Class 10 turned up.
Forty per cent of schools in the city that opened for students saw zero attendance below Class 10, with students staying with offline classes. For Class 10 and above, attendance was less than 20 per cent in most schools. Also, only a few schools have started Classes 6 to 9 offline. The ones that have are doing so in shifts of 9 am to 12 pm and 1 pm to 4 pm. And hardly any are offering school bus services.
At least three schools in Gurugram said many parents who work in the corporate sector have moved back to their hometowns given the work-from-home scenario. Sandeep Kumar, HR head at an MNC in Gurugram and a father of two who has gone back to his hometown Rewari for now, questions the decision to reopen schools. “There is no vaccine yet for children and the government changes its decision every day,” he says, indicating that if the situation turns, it will promptly close schools again. “Returning to the city with no certainty about further lockdowns will put us in a lot of financial stress.”
Teachers, too, are concerned about the challenges of convincing younger children to adhere to social distancing norms. “Children either don’t wear masks or they don’t wear them properly. We have enough masks and sanitisers in schools but these are hardly used,” says Sonu Saini, a teacher at a private school in Jamalpur, a village in Gurugram district. The school has no thermal scanning machine.
In pockets of rural Haryana, some schools opened for students below Class 5 even before the government’s go-ahead.
Meanwhile, most private schools in Delhi, too, had lacklustre attendance on Day One.
Some government schools, however, had a better turnout. “We have 3,300 students at our school and nearly 60 per cent came in today. The rain kept many others away,” says Ganga Das, principal, Government Boys Senior Secondary School, Mohan Garden. “We expect more than 80 per cent to join classes in the coming days.”