It was back to school for students of Classes X and XII in the district on New Year’s Day. The schools remained closed during this academic year in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Schools were all geared up to usher in students for revision classes and practicals in preparation for the public examinations scheduled to begin on March 17, but not all students were upbeat.
Thermal scanners and sanitisers welcomed students at the school gates. Inside, they headed in small groups of 10 and 15 to classrooms allotted to them in order to maintain physical distancing. Guidelines issued by the General Education and Health Departments were followed to make arrangements and guide students on the dos and don’ts.
The first day went off smoothly.
At Government Higher Secondary School for Girls, Cotton Hill, of the 1,031 total students in Classes X and XII, a maximum of 10 students from each division attended each shift.
Classrooms were also disinfected at the end of the session. Parents had been asked to drop off and pick up students to minimise health risks to their wards, the school authorities said.
Conveyance issues were reported from other schools too. With school authorities not operating own buses owing to difficulties in enforcing safety norms and many parents not in a position to drop off or pick up their children, a number of students failed to show up.
Many students who depended on public transportation had to wait for hours. Crowded buses did not ease students or teachers’ worries, leaving them wondering about the risks of contracting COVID-19 despite precautions in schools.
Students were attending tuitions where they were packed together on a bench, thus increasing the risk of infection, teachers pointed out. Their coming to school put other students and teachers at risk too.
Also, students did not seem entirely comfortable coming to school after months at home, especially against the backdrop of the annual examinations. Some students had missed a few digital classes, while others had missed quite a bit.
Even during regular classes, getting some students to perform at a par with others required a lot of effort. In the absence of such access to students, many had not taken these classes seriously, teachers said.
The digital classes were making rapid progress, so much so that students were finding it tough to keep up with them. Some preferred to attend classes conducted by individual schools, rather than those telecast, they said.
Bit low
Even in school, the students seemed a bit low at the changed environment. The atmosphere of fun was missing. In many cases, so were their friends, having been grouped into separate batches and classrooms.
The couple of months left for the examinations had also dimmed students’ hopes, teachers said, expressing hope that things would improve in days to come.