On Monday, State Board Schools across Tamil Nadu will reopen for Classes I-X for the 2022-23 academic year.
For the upcoming academic year, the School Education department has announced a slew of additions ranging from regular extra curricular and co-curricular activities, physical fitness sessions and dedicated time for reading. These are being introduced based on announcements made in the Tamil Nadu Assembly earlier this year by the School Education Minister.
With a focus on mental health of students, schools will now have an hour dedicated weekly to experience-sharing sessions, where class teachers are expected to take the lead and speak to students. Another fixture on the time table this year will be a twenty-minute session after lunch every day to students for reading— where students could either read periodicals, newspapers or books from their school library.
School Education Commissioner K. Nandhakumar and Director of Elementary Education G. Arivoli, in a circular, have further asked for physical education teachers to be present at least thirty minutes before schools begin in the mornings to ensure discipline and student safety, when they come to the campus. Common physical fitness sessions after the school day at least once a week are also encouraged, factoring in transport availability and how far students live from campus.
Over the last two years, the academic year has been marked by school closures and suspension of physical classes owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. While some private schools had managed to factor in co-curricular activities during online classes, most institutions had to do away with it.
In the coming year, several fun and interactive co-curricular and extra-curricular activities have been planned. Every week, two periods will be allotted for co-curricular and extra-curricular activities for Classes VI to X. A model time table released indicates that these can be accommodated any day of the week, as the last two periods.
For co-curricular activities, students can either have art and crafts classes, learn origami, folk arts, dance, music and can even be shown children’s movies. As part of the extra-curricular activities, schools are encouraged to form literary, environment or IT clubs and have student meet-ups during the time allocated weekly.
