Express News Service
NEW DELHI: With Delhi joining states cautiously reopening schools despite the Covid-19 pandemic, there are a few states where educational institutes will remain shut in September. The states and UTs where the local administration is yet to decide on this iclude Kerala, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, Goa and Puducherry. Other than Kerala, where the Covid situation is the worst in the country, it is more or less stable in other states.
In other states, students have either been called or are being called back to classrooms from the first week of next month, although attendance in places where schools started in July and August have remained low. In most states, a cap of 50% attendance has been imposed and schools have also been instructed to offer a choice of online or offline mode.
While a majority of the states have decided to open only secondary and senior secondary schools, Andhra Pradesh has allowed opening of schools at all levels including nursery. Experts have opined that young kids are particularly less susceptible to serious disease. The Centre, while stressing on vaccination of school teachers and other support staff, has promised a supply of two crore vaccine doses for them.
The announcement by the Delhi government, meanwhile, comes a day after NK Arora, chief of Centre’s working group on Covid-19, insisted that the time has come for schools to resume classes in a phased manner. He also suggested that teachers, non-teaching staff as well as drivers associated with schools should be vaccinated to create a protective ring around the students, reiterating that “children don’t get very sick with Covid-19”.
On Friday, over 50 doctors, public health experts, academicians and scientists also issued an open letter saying that school closure is “no longer tenable, especially for our younger children who are at the least risk from Covid-19 and face the highest cost due to school closure”.
