Back to school — hopefully for good now

New Delhi: Emotions ran high in Delhi schools on Monday, with some students breaking down as they returned to classrooms after months to the familiarity of their benches, their friends seated in the row beside them and the teachers in front of the boards. While Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal welcomed students back to school, he said he hoped they don't have to shut schools again.

Meanwhile, several schools in the city organised singing and interactive sessions on the first day of physical classes to ease the children back into the campus life as Education Minister Manish Sisodia visited several schools to meet with students.

"We sang Lata Mangeshkar songs in class to cheer everyone up and have a fun interactive session to reconnect with the students as it was the first day of school after a long time," Manu Gulati, a teacher of SKV No 2 in the Punjabi Bagh area said while another teacher said that they asked students to discuss what they missed most about being in school.

Interacting with students, Sisodia said that while online learning helped kids to keep in touch with studies during the pandemic, they can never be a substitute for classroom learning.

Underscoring that the Delhi government while concerned about the health of the children, is also worried about their education and the damage the last two years of on-and-off schooling had caused, Sisodia said that if they had not reopened schools now, there would be an entire generation in the city suffering from a massive knowledge gap.

He noted that last year, when schools were briefly reopened, teachers and students were following Covid protocol and hoped that more and more students would return to classrooms soon enough.

Currently, the schools have been asked to divide their classes into two batches with each coming in on alternate days. In the meantime, online learning too will be continued.

A teacher at SKV School in Lajpat Nagar explained that in their school, Group A gets Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays whereas Group B gets the other days. She added that turnout on Monday was not great as many had gone back to their villages. "Hopefully they will come in full strength by next week as we have managed to reach out to most of them," she said.

The HoS of another school in Patparganj said nearly 40 per cent of the batch had come in as they live in the vicinity and some who couldn't as they did not have NOC signed from their parents or are not in the city.

Considering all factors, Sisodia said that there was a good response on the first day as he hoped for more to come back to their schools.