Education Minister Adimulapu Suresh on Sunday said parents need not worry about sending their children to schools, which were being reopened from Monday (November 2), as adequate safety measures have been taken to keep the campuses free of COVID-19.
Ahead of the reopening of schools after a gap of six months, the Minister visited the Nidamanuru Zilla Parishad High School in Vijayawada Rural mandal to see if arrangements were in place for children to attend classes, free from any fear of getting infected by the virus.
Mr. Suresh paid tributes to ‘Amarajeevi’ Potti Sriramulu as part of the State Formation Day celebrations by garlanding his portrait. He later distributed school kits to children under Jagananna Vidya Kanuka. He then inspected the sanitisation equipment before checking toilets and kitchens and the quality of the new cooking ware in the kitchen, the drinking water plant and the seating arrangements in classrooms.
‘Precious time lost’
“Six precious academic months were lost due to the pandemic-induced lockdown, thus forcing the government to reduce the number of working days in the academic year. The Department of School Education is doing its best to facilitate classroom teaching for children in this difficult situation. Depending on the circumstances, the government will take appropriate steps,” he said.
Pointing to the fact that admissions were allowed in the current academic year without the need to produce transfer certificates, the Minister said the entire focus of the government was to make quality education accessible to the students.
He said the Mana Badi Nadu-Nedu programme was aimed at equipping schools with good infrastructure facilities in three phases, and admitted that works taken up under the first phase of this scheme moved at a slow pace due to shortage of workers on account of the pandemic. Efforts were on to wind up the first round and launch the second phase of the programme at the earliest, he said.
The Minister said that in view of the COVID-19 prevalence, three masks had been added in each school kit given under Jagananna Vidya Kanuka.
He said adequate number of seats were available to accommodate the six lakh students who passed out of Class X and besides, 180 new colleges and 35 vocational colleges had been sanctioned in the State.
Commissioner, School Education, Vadrevu Chinaveerabhadrudu, Joint Collector L. Siva Shankar, Sub-Collector H.M. Dhyanchandra, School Committee chairperson T. Anusha, Education Department Joint Director Ravindra Reddy, Krishna District Education Officer M.V. Rajyalakshmi, and Deputy DEO Chandrakala were present.
