Principals and school managements, who will welcome students back to classrooms on Monday, are grappling with severe staff shortage as teachers are down with COVID-19. Many school managements said they may have to tweak class timetables accordingly. Others said they would delay resuming offline classes until the caseload drops further and staff strength is back to normal.
The State Government on Saturday had announced that schools, which until now had been conducting on-campus classes for students in Std. X, XI and XII, could reopen in Bengaluru for offline classes for Std. I to IX.
Many private school managements are already facing a shortage of teaching staff, as many employees have relocated to their hometowns and are unable to conduct offline classes. D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary, Associated Managements of Primary and Secondary Schools in Karnataka (KAMS), however, said that despite these hurdles, physical classes will resume. “We will ensure that we do not waste time and complete portions for the subjects where teachers are unavailable. The portions for the remaining subjects can be conducted once the teachers recover,” he said.
Gayatri Devi, principal of Little Flower Public School in Bengaluru, said that they would reopen on Monday but said that the management was unsure of how many parents would send their children to school. “So we have decided to conduct both online and offline classes, but that will be challenging and stressful for our teachers,” she said.
School managements were relying on parents to ensure that even if their children have very mild symptoms of COVID 19, they should not be sent to school.
Some private schools and colleges have decided to postpone offline classes till COVID-19 cases drop further. Sumanth Narayan, founder of Shanthinikethana School, said that they will wait and watch this week and accordingly take a call. “Omicron spreads very easily and many parents and children are positive. Hence we have decided to postpone our reopening,” he said.
Sijo Sebastian, joint secretary, Voice of Parents’ Association, Karnataka, questioned the Government’s decision to reopen schools towards the end of the academic year. “Over the past few weeks, we have been seeing that the new variant spreads quickly. Even the corporate sector is reconsidering opening their offices and are continuing with work from home for the safety of their employees. Children are almost at the end of their academic year, and what is that we are going to achieve by opening the schools for 1-1.5 months?” said
Among parents, opinion is divided, with many expressing unhappiness over schools continuing with offline classes for the near future. Preethi S., whose daughter studies in Class IV in a private school, said, “Many schools have realised that it is more cost effective for them to conduct online classes. So they have decided not to reopen classes even though a large number of us have given consent. This is hampering the education of students and the department needs to issue a directive that all schools should reopen even if the number of students who will attend classes is low,” she said.
KAMS has decided to petition the Department of Public Instruction to take action against schools that do not resume offline classes.
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