New Delhi: For the first time in over two years, all schools in the Capital will go back to fully offline teaching-learning from April 1, according to the Delhi Disaster Management Authority's decision in a Friday meeting — a decision that was welcomed by students, parents and teachers alike even as schools asked, "Why wait till April?"
While the Covid lockdown in March 2020 had shut down schools, they have been reopened partially since every time one wave of the pandemic subsided. Nevertheless, the policy in Delhi has been to constantly continue schooling in the hybrid mode — both online and offline.
Now, the schools will finally be back to teaching fully offline.
Munni Jha, mother to a class 5 student Alok said that she was happy with the decision. "My son would attend online classes but I don't know if he is learning anything. I am not educated so I cannot understand what he is learning but in his school, I know teachers will be able to do so and he will also pay attention in class," she said.
Many parents are also hopeful that with complete offline mode transportation may likely resume — making it easier for them to send their kids back to school — especially for working parents.
Meanwhile, school heads and teachers welcomed the move wholeheartedly, saying they could not wait for schools to go fully offline once again. The principal of SKV Vidyalaya in the Shakarpur area, Ashok Trivedi, said, "Now the school premises will come alive and life will finally seem back to normal how it was before the pandemic. A full campus looks like a happy campus."
But the National Progressive Schools Conference (NPSC), which has over 120 private schools as its members, termed the decision too little, too late.
"Why April 1? It should have been allowed from March 1. Children from nursery to class VIII have a huge learning gap as we are observing them. In March, we could have focussed our efforts to bridge that gap so that children would have been ready for the next grade in April," NPSC Chairperson Sudha Acharya said.
Teachers are overburdened with online and offline teaching and assessment. They are no less than frontline workers and warriors. Teachers' mental health and wellbeing are of utmost importance for us to deliver quality education and create a happy and joyful environment, she added. with pti inputs