Mumbai: The Directorate of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education has asked State government schools to cut down on their summer and Diwali vacations to adjust holidays for Ganeshotsav and Christmas season.
A circular to this effect issued on March 29 allows schools to decide their own holidays.
Minimum working days
However they must ensure 230 working days, in a year with holidays not exceeding 76 days. Students of State board schools in Maharashtra have a break of around 45 days during summer and a 15-day Diwali vacation.
For the last two years, political organisations have been demanding extra holidays for the 10-day long Ganesh festival. This year, though the circular asks schools to close for Diwali holidays from October 10, it does not specify the number of days.
Instead, schools have been asked to decide their own academic calendar and submit the same to their concerned education officers.
Dividing it up
“Earlier, we used to be closed only two days holiday for Ganesh festival, which used to be the public holidays. However, since the last two years, the government left it to our discretion to adjust extra holidays between Ganeshotsav and Christmas,” said Ujwala Zare, principal of G.H. High School, Borivali.
“In our school,” she added, “we chose to divide the holidays equally — three days for Ganesh festival and three days for Christmas by taking into account factors like the weekend in between to ensure that the festival holidays stretch for a week. Ideally, more days are needed for Ganesh festival since large scale absenteeism is noticed during that period.”
Incidentally, these same norms would have to be followed by schools in Vidharbha too, where schools will be re-opening late on June 27 (as against June 15 in the rest of the State) due to the high temperatures in summer. The schools there have been asked to draft their academic calendars by ensuring 230 working days. Meanwhile, the state has also marginally increased the honorarium paid to teachers for paper correction.
