The Madras High Court on Wednesday ordered that government and private schools in the State can allow a small group of students to attend classes by following physical distancing and other safety norms if there were difficulties in teaching through television channels or the online mode.
Justices M.M. Sundresh and R. Hemalatha said the schools could also explore the possibility of “teachers going to the students and giving education if there exists facility to do so.” The orders were passed while disposing of a batch of PIL petitions filed for regulating the conduct of online classes.
After the filing of the cases, the Union Ministry of Education had come up with guidelines titled ‘Pragyata’ for conduct of online classes. The State government too came up with separate but similar guidelines on July 29 following a court direction issued on July 20.
Observing that the guidelines were elaborate and covered every other aspect concerned with digital education of children, the judges said the only issue that they had to adjudicate was with respect to implementation of those guidelines at the ground level and ensuring strict compliance by the schools.
Since there was every chance of schools not following the guidelines , the Division Bench held those guidelines to be binding on all schools and ordered constitution of district level committees by the School Education Department for monitoring online classes.
The court directed the Department to translate those guidelines in Tamil too, if not done already, and forward copies to all schools which, in turn, were expected to circulate them among the parents. Considering the ills of students remaining glued to computer and mobile phone screens for long, the Bench ordered strict compliance of the time limit prescribed in the guidelines, which state that no session of online class should extend beyond 45 minutes at a stretch and that there must be a break of 10 to 15 minutes after every session.
Only two online sessions a day could be conducted for students in classes I to VIII and a maximum of four sessions for those in classes IX to XII. Attendance for online classes should not be made mandatory and assessment of students through online mode should not be counted towards final grading, marking or performance evaluation, the court ordered.
It also made it clear that no online class should be organised for pre-primary classes and that online sessions could be scheduled only for interacting with the parents of those children and guiding them for not more than 30 minutes.
The judges also directed the School Education Secretary to issue a circular to all schools instructing them to inform the parents about the pop up blockers that could be installed in their computers and mobile phones to prevent display of undesirable adult content when children access the electronic devices to attend online classes.
As far as cyber-crimes reportedly committed in the course of conduct of online classes were concerned, the court ordered that the police and other authorities should take prompt action on such complaints.
Authoring the verdict, Justice Sundresh also said schools could explore the possibility of having end-to-end encryption to ensure cyber safety and also the viability of providing pre-recorded classes. The pre-recorded classes could be shared with the parents through WhatsApp apart from uploading them on school websites.
“We sincerely hope that the above said directions are complied with by all the stakeholders as we believe that the ongoing pandemic would pass allowing the children to breathe fresh air. We make it clear that the above directions are applicable to all schools functioning in the State of Tamil Nadu,” the Bench concluded.
