M Aamir Khan
Srinagar: Primary classes that resumed offline teaching on Monday after 20 months recorded around 90 percent attendance.
However, several private schools continued to remain shut for primary classes due to Covid-19 fears.
School administrators maintained that few parents were still apprehensive about sending their wards to schools while the government said it will ascertain the reasons as to why few private schools did not open today for primary classes.
“For the schools that reopened for primary classes, we had only called 50 percent students out of which the attendance remained 90 percent. It was very good,” Private Schools Association of Jammu and Kashmir (PSAJK) president GN Var told The Kashmir Monitor.
Regarding the schools that did not reopen today, Var said: “There are apprehensions among parents about sending their wards to schools as there were media reports of students and staff getting infected with Coronavirus at schools in Nagpur, Punjab, Mumbai, etc. Also, few schools are going through a financial crisis.”
While higher classes had resumed from March 1 with 50 per cent strength in most schools, several other schools are also going for rotational online and offline classes. Schools had mostly remained shut in the wake of the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5 in 2019 that was later followed by the Covid lockdown.
Director School Education Kashmir, Muhammad Younis Malik said the attendance in the government schools had remained good too.”We got a very good response from the staff and students. The attendance remained very satisfactory,” Malik told The Kashmir Monitor.
When asked that several private schools had not reopened for primary classes today, Malik said: “We will look into the matter. We will see what their issues are.”Interestingly, few private school administrations had sent messages to parents that it will be difficult to implement Covid-10 safety protocols among the students of primary classes.
Earlier, the Parents Association of Privately Administered Schools (PAPAS) too had objected to the government’s decision of reopening schools especially for the primary classes.
