BENGALURU: Private schools have opposed the government’s decision to disallow them to hold offline consultative classes with students from October 21. The flak comes after the government on Saturday decided against allowing class 9-12 students to visit their schools because of the growing number of Covid cases. This was despite the central government giving its nod for consultative offline sessions for clearing doubts.
The state government’s Vidyagama project that takes teachers to the doorstep of students, however, continues uninterrupted and has become a bone of contention. “If private school students face the threat of Covid, so do government school students.
The government must stop Vidyagama,” said president of the Associated Management of English Medium Schools in Karnataka Shashi Kumar. He termed the last-minute announcement by the government on Saturday on extending the shutdown till September-end as ‘unfortunate’. Several schools have already spent thousands of rupees on sanitising premises, preparing teachers and getting approval letters from parents, he said.
The state government’s decision is to attract students to the Vidyagama programme and put private unaided budget school as at a disadvantage, he said. Under Vidyagama, teachers are expected to take classes in the open, but students are being taught in classrooms, he alleged. On Monday, private schools will submit a representation to the government against its decision to disallow students from visiting the campus.