A number of private schools, which resumed offline teaching for Class 9 and onwards, reported good attendance on the first day in Bokaro. Schools said their main focus will be on preparing students for offline examinations likely to be conducted in March. The COVID-19 surge has declined significantly in Bokaro. The infection rate has dropped to 0.58 percent.
Several prominent schools claim that attendance of students will improve further in the coming days, including Pentecostal School Assembly, Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Sree Ayyappa Public School, and others. Chinmaya Vidayala, secretary, Mahesh Tripathi said, “We expect significant improvement in attendance at senior level in few days as outside students are expected to arrive soon.”
With permission to open the school from primary onward, as 17 districts of Jharkhand have done, schools will return to previous practices of physical operation and expect normalcy. In schools, strict adherence to rules and regulations are in place to ensure covid appropriate behavior by all, including sanitization, thermal scanning, and physical distancing.
Principals, teachers, and staff in most schools have received two vaccine doses. As in the pre-pandemic period, the school has normalized transportation facilities to help students get to school. Karuna Prasad, the principal of Pentecostal Assembly School, said that 65 to 70 per cent of students in Class 10 attended school, while 55 per cent of students in Class 9 attended school. Students in Class 12 are taking pre-board exams online.
Prasad said “though teaching is going on both in offline and online mode , the teachers are happy to have students back in classes. Practical classes have been especially scheduled to enable students to catch up what they missed during the last month. The parents are supportive in sending their children to school.”
Ayyapa Public School, Bokaro, director SS Mahapatra said that his school started offline classes from January 1 and at present the attendance is almost 50 per cent. Meanwhile, Tripathi also said that attendance in Chinmaya Vidyalaya was about 20% in 9 th and 10 th attendance was around 45%”.
