New Delhi
The chairperson of the National Progressive Schools’ Conference, Sudha Acharya has written to Lieutenant-Governor of Delhi Anil Baijal, requesting ‘unconditional opening’ of schools in Delhi, that includes the option of attending classes online.
This comes in the wake of Friday’s Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) meeting, where it is expected to discuss the further easing of restrictions such as limited market timings and the night curfew. The conference has some of the most prominent schools in Delhi such as Sanskriti School, Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, the various branches of Delhi Public School (DPS) and Modern School.
In its last meeting, the DDMA had decided to reopen educational institutions but allowed for the hybrid mode to continue, meaning that while schools can conduct offline classes, students can opt out of these by attending online classes. Schools reopened for classes 9 to 12 on February 7 and for nursery to 8 on February 14.
‘The Covid contagion has drastically impacted students’ skills and competencies. Once children return back to school, we can track in detail the progress as well as the uniqueness of each learner in the cognitive, affective, socio-emotional, and psycho motor domains. Incidentally, the choice of catering to both online mode and normal school is not only a hindrance in delivering quality education but has also overburdened the teaching fraternity,” read the letter written by Acharya.
Most schools have also cited the hybrid mode as the reason they are not being able to reintroduce their bus services and the government is also keeping providing cooked midday meals on hold till classes move completely offline.
