BHOPAL: As schools reopened on Monday to poor turnout, private school associations said that the state government directives to reopen classes for few students is not feasible for them as they have to bear huge expenses while opening the campuses.
“We are asked to open classes with 50% student strength. That too, one class at a time. How can we open schools in such a situation? The entire campus cannot be reopened for 100-200 students,” said Vinny Raj Modi, vicepresident of MP Association of Private Unaided Schools.
Missionary schools also voiced their concern. “The state government has not mentioned anything about the fees. Is it possible to open an entire campus for such a small number of students, and that too on the basis of tuition fee charged from students? There are several parents who have not even paid the fee for last year's academic session. Running schools requires heavy expenses. Who will bear the cost?” asked Sojan Joseph, secretary, Bhopal Sahodaya Complex.
Missionary schools can think of opening campuses in August only if the state government comes out with a “proper SOP on fees”, he said. “If the government fails to address the issue, it is possible that campuses will remain closed indefinitely. We have incurred huge losses and can’t open like this,” said Joseph.
Unlike private schools, the government schools in the state capital reopened classes with a low presence of the students. Except for a few schools, the turn-out of the students was as low as10%-15%. Several schools were spotted ill-prepared to resume classes.
There are 110 government higher secondary schools in Bhopal. Highest turnout of students was around 60 students out of 270 students in the government Excellence school. Even focus of the school education department was found limited to Excellence School as the presence of higher authorities of the department was seen on this campus only.
DEO Bhopal Nitin Saxena said that the presence of students will increase gradually. “It is true that the turnout of students was low on the first day. We are expecting to increase the turn out in the near future. However, we are happy that the students have shown keen interest after schools open. Even those students who did not attend classes on day one made several queries about the campus reopening on phone,” said Saxena.
While visiting a couple of government schools’ preparation TOI team spotted that schools were not fully prepared to reopen classes. Such was the situation that the entire campus of Govt Mahatma Gandhi Higher Secondary School, BHEL was in darkness for the past 24 hours.
“We have made several complaints to the electricity department but nothing has been done so far,” said Hemlata Parihar, principal, Mahatma Gandhi School. Such was the situation that when TOI reached the school gate the teachers were found running to take lectures in the classes.
The ill preparation of the school could be gauged from the fact that several class rooms were even not opened. Nowhere, it was found that the sanitisation of the classes was done. Even the keys were not available to open the class rooms. “We have got such a huge number of students’ admission this year that it would seem difficult to accommodate in the classes as classrooms were less,” said principal Parihar. No thermal scanning and senitiser was found at Govt Naveen Higher Secondary School, Misrod.
