Fear, misgiving, resignation and bravado is the wide arc of moods among parents and students with scores of children testing positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus over the past one week in Telangana. On November 28, students at a BC Welfare School in Muthangi tested positive for the virus. On December 2, another batch of students of a BC Welfare School in Indresham, about 25 km from Muthangi, were found positive.
“My daughter had online classes for the past few weeks, but in a parent-teacher meeting recently, the school insisted that exams will be held offline. Now we are not sure whether we should take the risk and let her write the exam,” said the parent of a student who goes to a well known public school in the city.
“Due to Omicron news, parents have stopped sending children to school. It is back to online classes,” said another parent of a class VIII student in Jubilee Hills area.
While private schools are still experimenting with online and offline modes, government schools and budget schools are back to classroom teaching. “All the students are back in school. There is no dip in attendance over the last few days. We are asking students to wear masks all the time,” said Anjaneshwar Rao, headmaster of a government primary school in the city. The school is housed in a multi-storey building and day scholars from Class I to X study in shifts, exiting and entering from a single entrance.
At a press briefing, when Director of Public Health G. Srinivasa Rao was asked why clusters were being detected in government schools and not in corporate schools, he had said “it is only because residential schools have closed settings where children stay under one roof”.
Fake news
In the midst of fears over a possible third wave, fake news has again gained traction about functioning of colleges and schools. Education Minister P. Sabitha Indra Reddy was forced to issue a statement on normal functioning of schools with COVID protocol. “Don’t believe in propaganda on social media about school holidays,” she shared, tagging the Chief Minister and IT Minister.
A day later, at an engineering university in the city, 25 students and five staffers tested positive, triggering a move towards online classes.
