After suspending classes a few days ago due to rising corona cases, the State government has declared holidays for schools and junior colleges from April 27 to May 31, and April 26 will be the last working day of the academic year.
Education Minister P. Sabitha Indra Reddy said the decision was taken by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who reviewed the situation with Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar and other education department officials.
With regard to reopening the schools and junior colleges on June 1 for the new academic year, the Minister said that the decision would be taken depending on the COVID situation. The schools open every year on June 1 to kickstart the new academic year.
This academic year will end with no exams conducted for school students as the government decided to promote all the Class 10 students as the situation was not conducive for conducting the examinations with corona cases spiking. It means, all the 5,21,392 students enrolled in Class 10 will be promoted based on internal assessment. As per the schedule, Class 10 exams were to be held from May 17 to 26.
The government had earlier decided to promote 53,79,388 students enrolled in Classes 1 to 9 to the next class without conducting any exams. Apart from the corona cases the closure of schools for most part of the year was cited to be the reason for promotion.
Schools and junior colleges were reopened in February with the option given to students to either attend physical classes or take offline classes. Some schools insisted on physical classes for higher class students. But with the virus cases spiking in the schools, particularly where hostels were attached, the government preferred closure from March 23.
Private school managements differed with the government on the closure and said it would be a big blow on the students’ learning capabilities. But the government did not yield to the representations of school managements with the virus spreading rapidly and parents worried about the safety of the kids in an unprotected environment.
