Delhi: Parental nod to attend class not a must for those in 10, 12

With Covid-19 cases on a downward spiral and easing of curbs, schools in the Capital are slowly, but surely, returning to the ‘old normal’. Starting from Monday, schools will no longer need to take consent from the parents of class 10 and 12 students to attend offline classes.

According to the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) order issued on Saturday, the blended/hybrid mode (online and offline) of learning and consent from parents will be only followed for students up to class 9 and class 11 till March 31. The order leaves out classes 10 and 12, which means that parental consent from board class students will no longer be valid.

Officials from the directorate of education have also confirmed that parental consent will not be mandatory for students who will write their board exams.

School administrators welcomed the move and said that the decision will allow them to hold offline practice exams before the board exams commence in April. However, they said that it would have made more sense if parental consent was also exempted for students of class 9 and class 11 as well.

“If students in board classes can come to school without parental consent, what is stopping students in classes 9 and 11? Both the classes are equally important. The message being sent out is that only board exam assessments are crucial,” said Sudha Acharya, the chairperson of the National Progressive Schools’ Conference (NPSC), which has over 120 Delhi schools as members.

NPSC includes schools such as Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, Bal Bharati Public School, Springdales, Sanskriti School and Delhi Public Schools (DPS) among others.

On Saturday, NPSC also wrote a letter to Delhi lieutenant governor Anil Baijal, urging him to discontinue online classes from March 2 itself. A day before, the DDMA decided to discontinue online classes and revert to only in-person classes from the month of April.

In its letter to LG Baijal, the NPSC said that the Covid-19 pandemic, which triggered the closure of schools, had adversely impacted students’ skills. It said that it was crucial to improve their competencies before they moved to the next grade and sought that the DDMA order, outlining suspension of all hybrid classes, be implemented from March 2 itself.

“We are grateful for your intervention and the decision to reopen schools unconditionally. However, the clause of reopening offline classes from April 1 seems to be a cause of concern. We have observed that children from nursery to class 8 have a huge learning gap. We could have made efforts to bridge that gap to some extent in the month of March, so that children are more ready for their next grade in April,” said Acharya.

Acharya added that schools in other states were reopening unconditionally from March itself.