Summary:
Kolkata, Oct 25 (PTI) West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said schools and colleges in the state will reopen from November 16, after a gap of around 20 months, and directed the chief secretary to facilitate the process.A school education department official said the government will issue a notification for resuming classroom teaching from classes nine to 12.The decision about reopening schools for other classes will be made later depending on the emergent Covid-19 situation, the official said.Plans are being chalked out for resuming physical classes in colleges, a source in the state secretariat said."Reopen schools and colleges from November 16.
Before that, you have to carry out cleaning there and other measures," Banerjee told Chief Secretary H K Dwivedi at an administrative review meeting at Uttar Kanya, the branch secretariat of the state government in Siliguri in north Bengal.The chief minister had said earlier in the day that educational institutions will reopen from November 15."Earlier, I had said educational institutions will reopen on November 15.
But since that is a holiday (tribal freedom fighter Birsa Munda"s birth anniversary), schools will now reopen on November 16," she said.Schools and colleges in the state have been closed since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in March last year."As per the preliminary plans, students of junior classes till Class 8 will continue to have online classes and they do not need to be present at schools physically.
Plans are being made for reopening colleges," a highly-placed source in the state secretariat told PTI.Meanwhile, doctors and educationists welcomed the decision to reopen educational institutions."Children have been eagerly waiting for the schools to reopen.
This was needed for a long time.
But we must also not forget about the precautionary measures needed to be taken for the children attending physical classes," renowned gastroenterologist Dr Abhijit Chowdhury said.Senior physician Dr Syamasis Bandyopadhyay said, "Online classes are like child"s play.