BHOPAL: Class 5 student Vishal Verma has stopped attending classes in his school. Reason: His parents stopped sending him to school after he suffered heat stroke twice due to high temperature after the schools were reopened.
Vishal is not alone. A number of students are suffering from fever, vomiting and other summer ailments after they started attending schools and temperature rose to record high in the city. Parents have now demanded declaring summer vacation.
In view of the record high temperature, the school education department has recently directed schools to take classes only till 12 noon. However, the decisions has further added to the woes of the students. “Temperature has been consistently hovering around 40 degrees for the past one week now due to the heatwave. In such a situation, sending students to school is just impossible. I have stopped sending my child to the classes on campus,” said Ashok Verma, father of Vishal.
Parents have demanded that the school education department should announce the closure of campuses at the earliest. “Biggest challenge is for the students using school buses. My son reaches home after traveling for over an hour by bus in such a high temperature. It is better not to send him to school,” said Prerna Jain, mother of Class 4 student Ankit Jain.
As there is no clarity on the closing of campuses, several schools have even announced first term exams. “This is not done. How could schools go for exams in such a situation when schools are not running full time,” said Shubhankar Gupta, father of a Class 6 student.
When contacted, school education department officials said that they have not received any information from authorities to close the campuses. “As of now, I have no such information available with me to close the campuses,” said DEO Bhopal Nitin Saxena.
Insiders said that the school education department is likely to issue the much-awaited circular in the next couple of days to close the campuses for the summer vacations.
