Uttarakhand Government Seeks District Magistrates’ Feedback On Opening Schools

Dehradun:

The Uttarakhand Government on Thursday asked all district magistrates to give their feedback to it within a week to help the state Cabinet take a call on opening schools. State School Education Minister Arvind Pandey, who held a meeting with senior officials of his department on the matter, said schools can be opened only after taking opinions of school managements and children’s guardians.

All district magistrates have been asked to take the opinion of everyone concerned with the matter and get back to the government within a week, Mr Pandey said. A decision on when to open schools in the state would be made only after arriving at a consensus, he said. Schools are proposed to be opened in three phases, he said, adding classes from 9 to 12 can be opened in the first phase, from 6 to 12 in the second phase and all of them in the third, the minister said. But everything depends on the feedback to be received next week from the districts, Mr Pandey added.

The MHA guidelines issued last night, on September 30, said that the states have full discretion on the decision to reopen schools. As per the new guidelines, states and union territories have been given the flexibility to decide when to reopen the schools and other educational institutions after October 15.