Schools from classes 9 to 12, colleges, univs to reopen today
LUCKNOW: Offline teaching on campus for classes 9 to 12, degree colleges and universities will resume across the state from Monday.
However, online teaching will continue for classes nursery to 8.
Additional chief secretary (home) Awanish Awasthi has issued an order in this regard.
All educational institutes will have to ensure Covid guidelines, set up Covid helpdesk and the order also makes face mask mandatory.
The school reopening order has been issued as the Covid cases are declining. On January 20, the state had reported 18,554 Covid cases. From February 2, the state started administering Covid-19 vaccine to the 15 years to 18 years age group.
So far more than 9.7 million individuals between 15 to 18 years of age have got their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine,” an official said.
All board examinations are just a month away and universities semester exam have been delayed due to prolonged closure of the educational institutions in the state since January.
The state government had ordered closure of schools from January 6. Universities and degree colleges, both government and private, were closed from January 10 and their reopening kept getting extended due to spike in Covid-19 cases.
Unaided Private Schools Association (UPSA), Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday had held a press conference and requested the government to allow reopening of schools from the primary section to Class 12.
President UPSA, Anil Agarwal had said that schools should be allowed to reopen immediately.
On Sunday, UPSA secretary, Mala Mehra said, “We welcome the re-opening of Classes 9 to 12 but it would have been better if all the classes from nursery onwards too were allowed to operate. The online model as we know isn’t optimum and Offline Classes cannot be replaced by online classes. Normalcy must return to schools.”
“As final examinations are near, students need face to face interaction with teachers. Parents also want schools to reopen and we hope that by next week students of all classes will be back to their institutes,” she said.
In the last two years, schools for classes 1 to 5 have been closed for about 505 days, including 351 days in the 2020-21 session and 154 days in 2021-22. Similarly, students of
classes 6 to 8 have not been in schools for 478 days; 332 days (2020-21) and 146 days (2021-22). For classes 9 to 12, there was no school for 351 days with 213 days of 2020 and 138 days of 2021.