PANJIM: Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant late Tuesday evening clarified that the government has not decided on reopening of schools up to Class VIII from Monday, November 22. He, however, added that the government will make an announcement by Saturday.
Sawant, who is also the Education Minister, had chaired the COVID task force meeting earlier in the evening and heard their suggestions.
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“Please understand that just because the task force has said schools should reopen by Monday, doesn’t mean the government has already taken such a decision. The Education Department will be taking the decision but there is still a lot left for us to examine. I am very concerned about the health of the students,” Sawant said.
Earlier in the day, the State’s COVID Task Force met and recommended that schools from nursery to Class VIII resume physical classes from November 22. This was announced by Expert Committee member of the task force Dr Shekhar Salkar. Emphasis was laid that all pandemic SOPs would have to be followed by the schools.
Salkar pointed out that last week, the expert committee that consists of medical professionals had already recommended that these classes should commence in physical mode again.
“Detailed circulars and SOPs will be issued by the Education Department shortly regarding COVID appropriate behaviour, staggered timing, etc. School assembly will not be permitted and the schools will be asked to ensure that crowding does not happen in their premises,” Salkar said and added that if the COVID cases do increase, then a decision will be taken to curtail the classes.
Sawant noted that the task force had recommended staggered timings for classes and that the absence of physical classes for the young students could create psychological issues. He also pointed out that while the task force consists of medical professionals, who have said that the impact of young students getting affected by COVID is low, the government cannot rush with this decision as the students fall in the age bracket of below 18 that is not vaccinated.
Asked what the main takeaways from the meeting were, Sawant said he wants to hear the views of Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs), Assistant Director of Education (ADEIs), well-wishers, managements of schools and other stakeholders. He also said the views of political parties will be taken into consideration.
“The task force spoke of following COVID protocols, maintaining hygiene, etc, and I have no doubt all the schools will follow all this. Nonetheless, I have asked the Director of Education to speak to the headmasters and get their feedback on how prepared they are to resume schools again and if they have everything in place to ensure that all the SOPs are followed,” Sawant said.
Asked about school buses, Sawant said that is another issue that they had discussed and the Education Department is also looking at how students will travel to schools.
“We will also look at what has happened with the schools that have reopened classes from Class IX onwards. That also happened following the recommendations of the task force. We have observed that these schools have spread out their timings and have taken other measures like capacity of each class, etc. We will look at how they have managed while making the final call,” Sawant said.
He said the main concern, and this is something he had asked the task force and the Education Department, was what happened to school complexes like the one at Cujira where there are 500 to 1,000 students visiting to attend their respective classes.
“Now for government schools there won’t be a problem as there maybe ten to fifteen students per class and all of them are from the same village. In big complexes, you have students coming from different places,” Sawant said.
He added that he asked the Director of Education to inform him about how many students will be there in each class where the complex has a large number of students. He said even if each class has a limited number of students, he wanted to know about the movement of that batch out of the school and entry of the next batch into the school for their classes. “You will have a situation where there are 25-50 students moving in batches. I want to know about all the measures we can take to keep them safe,” Sawant added.
The CM said the government will examine all these factors in the next two to three days and should make the announcement by Saturday.
Asked about the status of government staff, Sawant said it will be compulsory for them to be vaccinated and attend duty, with the exception of those who have not been vaccinated due to medical reasons. Sawant also urged the 15 per cent who have not taken the second dose to do so soon.
