CHANDIGARH: Although the UT education department has allowed government and private schools to reopen, the consent of parents continues to be mandatory, which, many of them, have alleged the educational institutions were giving a go-by.
Recently, parents of classes IX and XI students of a convent school in Sector 9 wrote to the district education officer expressing concern over reopening and the school “not clearly giving option of offline mode for exam”.
In a letter to department, the parents said, “All of us are extremely concerned about the school reopening to conduct exams in February. We can risk anyone but not our children. We are apprehensive to send our daughters to school under these conditions. Not only are we risking their health but also most of us have elderly parents at home. We have been taking utmost precautions to keep our children and parents safe at home during the pandemic while we work from home.”
The parents requested the department to direct the school to provide the option of online or offline mode for February examinations. “It is our request to you to kindly issue instructions to the school wherein they offer children the option of taking exams online or offline. It is understood that several reputed schools in the city have already consented to hold exams in both online and offline mode.”
Parents of different schools had earlier too raised similar concerns.
The parents further said, “It may be noted that some schools have turned into Covid-19 hotspots after reopening. It is a fallacy to deem that the pandemic is behind us at this stage. The CBSE has also recognised this fact and postponed the board exams.”
The school authorities could not be contacted for a comment. Earlier, more than 120 parents had written to the school principal in this regard.