Chief secy to look into school reopening plan prepared by edu dept

Ranchi: The department of school education and literacy development is likely to send its proposal on the reopening of schools for senior students to the state disaster management department by next week.
On Thursday, department secretary Rahul Sharma said, “We are finalising the proposal and once that is done, we will forward it to the disaster management department by next week for its approval.”
The proposal will be looked into by a committee headed by chief secretary Sukhdev Singh before it takes the final call on the matter. As committee members, senior officials like state home secretary L Khiyangte and health secretary Nitin Madan Kulkarni will also look into the proposal.
Sharma said that even if the committee is in favour of reopening the schools, they will be given enough time for making all the necessary arrangements related to the maintenance of safety norms, rotation of teaching staff and transportation.
The Union health ministry had issued the standard operating procedures for reopening of schools for the senior students from September 21.
A state government official requesting anonymity said the HRD ministry may fix a date later than September 21 for the reopening of schools.
He added that the Centre’s decision is largely to assess the mood of students, schools and parents on the issue. There may be further relaxations if the response is positive.
A few months ago, the Jharkhand Education Project Council conducted two online surveys among the parents on reopening of schools as part of which a large percentage of them were not in favour of reopening until a vaccine is made available in India.
The first online survey in July revealed that of the 1,73,129 respondents, 64% of them wanted schools to reopen after a vaccine is invented. Only 9% of parents were in favour of opening schools in September while 47% of them wanted classes to be held for four hours daily.
The second survey in August, which involved parents of senior students, indicated a vaccine is prerequisite for reopening of schools. Only 25% of them spoke in favour of resuming classes in September and around 48% were of view that the syllabus must be curtailed for this session.