Schools in Delhi to reopen for offline-only classes from today

For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, schools in the Capital will reopen solely in the offline mode from Friday, authorities said.

School administrators said that the on-and-off two-year-long pandemic-induced school closures have resulted in a significant learning gap and the return to in-person classes would finally allow them to help students learn properly.

Schools were first closed in March 2020 amid the onset of Covid-19 pandemic, and classes resumed in online mode. While schools reopened for in-person classes multiple times in the past two years, online classes were never called off. The decision to phase out online classes was taken during the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) meeting in February, following which schools were permitted to fully switch to offline classes from April 1, when the next academic session begins.

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Sudha Acharya, chairperson of the National Progressive Schools’ Conference (NPSC), a consortium of over 120 Delhi schools, said that schools were eagerly looking forward to the resumption of classes on campus. “After two years, we will be reverting to the earlier system of teaching and learning. There will be no online classes and we are all very excited about resuming pre-pandemic ways of teaching,” said Acharya, the principal of ITL Public Dwarka.

A number of schools, however, said that they will resume classes only from Monday. Jyoti Arora, principal of Mount Abu Public School in Rohini, said that while the school had started calling students of classes 9 to 12 from the beginning of this week, students of other classes will return to the school on Monday. “Online classes will be completely suspended. Both students and teachers are happy since a return to the familiar routine is less stressful,” said Arora.

Tania Joshi, principal of The Indian School, said that schools were keeping their fingers closed and looking forward to normal learning without any disruptions. Joshi said that except one or two parents, most were happy about the return to offline learning as before. “Barring one or two parents, no one has raised any complaints about the suspension of online classes. Everyone is looking forward to the return of some kind of normalcy even though we will continue to abide by all Covid protocols,” said Joshi.