UDUPI: Schools, PU colleges chugged back to action after a seven month hiatus with students trooping back to campuses on New Year’s Day with gusto across the district on Friday.
Barring a case of a teacher at government higher primary school, Brahmawar and an attender at Karnataka Public School, Hebri testing positive for Covid-19 on the day academic activities resumed, it was relatively smooth sailing for the planned course of action for the day. Classes will resume in these two places on January 4.
Attendance in high schools and second PUC in the district hovered above 50%, slightly below the 62% recorded in neighbouring Dakshina Kannada district, noted S Suresh Kumar, minister for primary and secondary education. Elsewhere in the state, second PU attendance was 32.56% with 78794 out of 241965 students in 5492 PU colleges attending and 3.80-lakh out of 9.27-lakh high school students (41%) in 16850 high schools in attendance.
Accent was on strict adherence to Covid-19 protocols with thermal scanners in place to screen students as they entered the classrooms. Students turned up with masks and few brought their own bottles of hand sanitizers as they strove to push several months of relatively inactivity to the background. Teachers and school development monitoring committees too took extra care to ensure that the students were welcomed back to the campuses with care.
Zilla Panchayat president Dinakar Babu visited several high schools in the district to get first-hand information on how the respective schools were following the SOP laid down by the state government. Babu, while directing the school managements to follow the SOPs without fail, also interacted with them regarding the admission of students, attendance for the day and other aspects related to the academic year with parents and teachers.
The Department of public instruction sent out Dos and Don’ts of the SOP to students on their mobile keeping in line with its motto – Let us drive Corona away and educate our children in a safe environment. Class rooms, especially the washrooms were frequently sanitized, said N H Nagur, DDPI. While attendance in government schools was 59.53%, it was 55% in aided schools and 36.93% in unaided private schools in the district on day one, he said.
Students at Sri Rama Primary School, Karandady in Majoor of Kaup taluk were welcomed with clarinets and other traditional instruments being played in their honour. Social distancing norms were strictly adhered to. While educational institutions inspected Covid19 negative reports of teachers, other institutions arranged for Covid-19 tests for teaching staff on their campuses. Nagur said the attendance was likely to pick up from January 4.